


Burn Out the Night

by StilesBastille24



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Billy and Steve find common ground, Billy doesn't remember being possessed, M/M, Neil hargrove is a bad person, References to Child Abuse, Slow Build, Steve is so unimpressed with Hawkins dark side, billy and max bonding, billy lives, post-S3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:29:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26770675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StilesBastille24/pseuds/StilesBastille24
Summary: Steve zeroes in on the center of Billy’s white t-shirt, where the scar is, as if he saw it being made. “You’re not going to believe the truth."“Try me, Harrington.”Steve meets Billy’s gaze. “Beings, from an alternate dimension, broke through into our dimension, and one of their species, the most powerful one, took over your body. Possessed you. Made you do a ton of horrible shit, and then tried to kill you. It would have succeeded too, if the gate to its world hadn’t been closed in time.”Billy stares at Steve. When Steve doesn't laugh, Billy glares viciously. “You are so dead, Harrington."
Relationships: Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 10
Kudos: 237





	1. Home Isn't Pretty

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Blue Oyster Cult's Burnin' For You. It plays as such a Steve/Billy song for me.

Billy has never hated this godforsaken town more. Conversely, his father has never been more thrilled by Hawkins. A corrupt government scandal that sets a mall on fire, kills thirty innocent residents and the heroic, beloved Chief of Police really has a way of driving down property values. Hargrove Sr. beamed ear to ear when he packed up their shitty little family and moved them across town into a ritzy two story. 

Billy could now claim the prestige of living in the same subdivision as King Steve himself. Billy wants to set the whole fucking town on fire. He’d hated it when they moved here and he hates it more now that the place nearly fucking killed him. If Billy is going to meet an early death, he plans on it being either by his father’s fists or in a car crash with himself behind the wheel. 

Their new house is one of the few left occupied on the street. After the Starcourt Disaster, as the press calls it, everybody with half a brain got the fuck out of Dodge. But not the Hargroves, oh no. No, the Hargroves dug their roots in deeper because with the competition cut in fourth, Hargrove Sr. would be up for that promotion before you could say ‘Fuck Hawkins.’

In fact, Hargrove Sr. has been nothing but smiles since the Starcourt Disaster. New house, promotion on the horizon, and a government payout for almost killing his son. The two weeks Billy had spent in the hospital wrapped in more gauze than a fucking mummy, eating nothing but shitty jello, healing wounds that couldn’t be explained by a reactor explosion - even one run by Russians - had all been paid for by Uncle Sam. And the good old US of A hadn’t stopped there. They dished out enough cash to put Billy and Max through college with enough to spare for a brand new car for Hargrove Sr. and his darling wife Susan. 

All that was required was that Billy never discuss what had happened in the mall. That wasn’t a problem, and not just because Hargrove Sr. had added a new busted lip to ensure his son’s silence. Billy had nothing to discuss because there was nothing but blackness where the Starcourt Disaster should have been. Nothing but blackness all the way back to the night he went to meet up with Mrs. Wheeler. 

Billy presses up into his next repetition. Logically, his muscles should be shaking from the weights at either end of the bar. Shaking because he had spent two weeks in the hospital not able to do anything but lie there while he waited for his body to heal. Instead, he lifts the bar smoothly and idly thinks about adding a few more pounds to it. 

If anything, Billy escaped the Starcourt Disaster with a crackling scar across the center of his chest and improved physical strength. Oh - and the fucking amnesia. And something else, something he hasn’t told anyone about because who the fuck was Billy going to share secrets with? Fucking no one, that’s who. 

If he was back in Cali, Billy would have told Shawn or Tyler, but that isn’t possible in Hawkins. There was only fucking Tommy who Billy could barely stand on a good day, the other sportos on the basketball team, and a string of girls he’d fucked and never thought of again. So no, Billy is keeping the nightmares to himself. He presses into another rep and tries to get his mind to only focus on the push and pull of his muscles. 

“Billy?” 

He clenches his jaw, ignoring the voice from his door. 

“Billy, I need a ride.” 

“Twenty,” he mutters, lowering the bar slowly. He lifts it again. “Twenty-one.”

“Please, Billy?” 

Ever since the Starcourt Disaster, Max has been tiptoeing around him like she’s waiting for him to just drop dead. He knows that she was at the mall when whatever happened, happened, but she’s sworn to the same silence as Billy, only with less money because she didn’t almost die. 

It’s not just tiptoeing either. When she talks to him, there’s this layer of affection that leaves Billy disgusted and pissed. He has done nothing, absolutely nothing to cultivate Max’s affection. He doesn’t fucking want it. If it wasn’t for the little bitch and her bitch of a mother, Billy would still be in California. 

“I don’t give a shit, Maxine,” Billy answers, letting his bar fall with a heavy thud to the floor. “Ask your mom.” 

“She and your dad went out to dinner.” She pushes the door open enough to see stick her head into his room.

Billy lifts his eyebrows at her. “Then I guess you’re walking.” He stands up and rips his shirt over his head, sending it in the general direction of his hamper. 

Reflexively, he glances down at his chest. The spidery red lines start at the end of his breastbone and spiral upwards, downwards, and outwards. Right now, Billy hates those scars about as much as he hates Hawkins. But he figures once they heal, he’ll have a badass scar and it won’t be so bad. 

“Are you - are you feeling okay?” Max asks. 

Billy’s surprised she’s still hanging around. He isn’t giving her a ride and no amount of ‘sisterly caring’ is going to change his mind. “Get out,” he says flatly. 

She looks at him somberly, the same way she looked at him when she first visited him in the hospital, like she thought he was going to die, or that he was already dead. That look makes Billy’s skin crawl. 

“Get out!” he screams this time. 

Max stays a beat longer before disappearing into the hallway. 

Billy glowers at his doorway. He fucking hates this town.

~*~*~*~

Thirty minutes later, Billy has showered, changed, and spruced up. He takes the stairs two at a time to the first floor, car keys jingling in his hand.

“Where are you going?” Max asks, looming out at him from the living room. 

“Out.” He pulls open the front door. 

“Then drop me off on the way.” She’s chasing after him, grabbing her backpack from the hooks on the wall. 

Billy turns on the porch, blocking her way out. “No. I’m not taking you anywhere.”

“Come on, Billy. Your dad said you’re supposed to be here watching me. If you leave me here - “

Billy clamps his hand on her wrist and yanks her out of the house. “I’m not taking you to Sinclair’s,” he threatens, shoving her down the steps in front of him. 

Max trips but keeps her balance, casting a withering gaze at him over her shoulder. “The Wheeler’s House.”

“You’re walking home,” Billy says as he opens the door to his dad’s old car. His Camaro was fucking totaled from a crash he couldn’t remember and Billy’s fucking pissed as hell about it. 

“Fine,” Max snaps, then her shoulders sag, like she’s sorry they’re fighting. 

That makes Billy’s skin prickle and he whips out of the driveway so fast she slams against the passenger side door. He smirks at the impact. “Buckle up, brat,” he taunts. “Wouldn’t want you going through the windshield.” 

From the side mirror he can see her glaring out the window. Status quo re-established, Billy feels himself settle. He reaches out, twisting on the radio and blaring Scorpions as he winds through the barren roads of Hawkins. 

When they pull into the Wheeler’s driveway, Billy’s heart does a sickening double beat. He’s only been here once before, when he was chasing down Max’s dumbass. It was also the night he had attempted to fucking ruin Steve Harrington’s perfect face on the floor of that weirdo Byers’ dirty kitchen linoleum. 

“Billy?” Max asks, and he realizes he’s been staring at the house for too long. 

“Are you getting the fuck out or what, Maxine?” he sneers. 

Max doesn’t move. “Billy, are you okay?” She nods towards the steering wheel. “You’re hands - they’re shaking.”

She’s right, though Billy hadn’t noticed until she mentioned it. What happened with Mrs. Wheeler? He crashed his car the night he was supposed to meet her. But he doesn’t remember that. He only remembers driving down one of Hawkins' endless empty roads toward the motel. And then nothing. Fucking nothing but black. 

“Out,” Billy commands, anger in his voice. 

Max jolts like she’s been shocked and it still takes her too long to get out of the car. Billy glares at her until she shuts the passenger door, then he peels out of the driveway, squealing the tires as he roars away from the subdivision. 

He’s going to Bishop’s the shitty liquor store at the very edge of Hawkins where Old Willy doesn’t give a flying fuck whose buying as long as they have cash. With his dad and Susan out for the night, Billy can get trashed and hopefully pass out and catch a few hours of sleep. It’s not until he’s halfway to the Motel 6 that Billy even realizes he’s driving there, and that his hands are still shaking. 

“Fuck!” he shouts, slamming his left hand against the steering wheel. 

Things have been like this since that night at Starcourt. The nightmares, the phantom panics, the unexplainable impulses. This time, Billy decides to give in, letting himself autopilot toward the site of his last memory before the hospital.

~*~*~*~

Billy is following a curve in the road when he catches sight of the old factory out of the corner of his eye. He can’t explain why he slams down on the brakes, fishtailing his dad’s 1970 Chevy Chevelle SS into the unused parking lot of the factory. Billy might hate his dad, but the old man has good taste in cars.

He leaves the keys in the ignition as he practically falls out the car, staring up at this old, disgusting building. Anxiety builds like a disease, filling him up until he’s screaming all of his hate and rage at this derelict building. “Fuck you!” he screams, vocal chords aching as he forces them to their extreme. “Fuck you!” 

Billy grabs a rock from the gravel parking lot and hurls it with all his force. It breaks through a second story window with a satisfying crash of glass. He grabs another rock, bigger this time, throws it as hard as he can. Grabs another. Screaming obscenities all the while. 

Then he’s panting, down on his knees, perfect hair marred by the sweat running down from his temples. His hand is cut and scuffed from pawing at the ground for rocks. The knees of his jeans are dug into the dirt, dirt that is going to be a bitch to wash out. Billy stares with hollow eyes at the building that looms over him like an impenetrable ghost. 

When Billy finally drags his attention away from the factory, he finds that night has fallen around him. Fog slips across the pavement, beckoning with swirling mists. He pulls himself up to his feet and climbs back into the still open door of the Chevelle. 

The neon red glow of the tiny car clock says that it’s 10:15pm. He’s been here for two hours. Something clenches in Billy’s chest. How did the time elapse without him noticing? He looks back up at the building. Every single window is smashed. 

Billy puts the car into reverse and hopes that Max got home before their respective parents. He doesn’t want a shouting match with his dad tonight.

~*~*~*~

The ceiling fan in his new room rotates slowly, slashing long shadows above him as Billy stares upwards. The blinds on his bedroom windows are open like the windows themselves. The cool breeze filters in half heartedly, leaving Billy with the sheets kicked off into a mess at the edge of the bed.

He rolls his head to the side, looks at the posters on the wall by his closet. The clock on his dresser ticks dully. He tilts his head back, eyeing the blades of his fan as they revolve. 

“Billy?”

His eyelids flutter shut, irritation sweeping over him. He keeps his eyes closed. With any luck, Max will fuck off before Billy has to tell her too. 

There’s a creak on the floorboards followed by the tentative twisting of his doorknob. Billy grits his teeth, tension filling his muscles as he continues to hold perfectly still. 

The door pushes softly open and Max steps in. “Billy?”

“What?” Billy bites out, furious at this nighttime intrusion. 

“I’m - I’m scared.” 

Billy jerks upright, twisting out of bed to look at his step sibling. She’s hovering in the doorway, one hand nervously twisting the doorknob back and forth. Her red hair is tied in two braids, she’s wearing sleep shorts, and an oversized skateboard company t-shirt. She looks every bit the role of a pestering younger sister. 

“Scared of what?” he asks, impatience in his tone. 

Max hesitates, twists the doorknob right, then left. “Do you -“ she bites her lip, Billy glares balefully at her in the dim light of his bedroom. “Do you remember Starcourt?”

Instinctively, Billy darts a look over her shoulder, looking for his dad. The word ‘mall’ hasn’t been allowed in their house since the government payout. If his dad heard Max saying Starcourt he’d have a fucking aneurism and then find a way to blame it on Billy. Neil would keep his punches light enough not to leave a mark but hard enough to get his message through. This is your fault, you’re worthless, you’re shit, you’re nothing. 

His dad isn’t there, only the blackness of the hallway leering over Max’s shoulder. It makes Billy cross to her all the same. That blackness, it agitates Billy almost as much as his father’s silhouette. “Get in here,” he hisses, wanting to close out the darkness and the possibility of his dad hearing them. 

Max hurries to comply, easing the door shut with her slight body weight resting against it. “Do you, Billy?” she asks again, her pale, freckled face earnest in the moonlight. 

“I don’t remember shit. You know that.” He looks her up and down. “Why, what do you remember?”

“Nothing!” she says too quickly. 

Billy reaches over to his nightstand, picking up his pack of cigarettes and tapping one out. The flame of his lighter is painful in the darkness. “You’re lying, Maxine,” he says, pointing his cigarette at her before placing it between his lips. 

The smoke infiltrates his lungs, filling up the echoing places inside him that are screaming he doesn’t want to have this conversation. No one has told him shit about the Starcourt disaster. Not a single one of the little fucks Max runs around with. Not a single fuck from his highschool. If anyone knows anything, they are keeping their lips fucking zipped. 

Max shifts on her bare feet, her toenails painted a bright pink that clashes garishly with her red hair. “What’s the last thing you do remember?” she deflects.

Billy’s eyes go flat. Max is bullshitting him right now. They’ve been over this with the doctors for the past month. Max knows without a shadow of a doubt that the last thing Billy remembers he was driving his car down that road. The one with the abandoned factory. 

“When did I come back that night?” he asks her.

Billy doesn’t remember meeting up with Mrs. Wheeler that night. And after today’s freak out at the warehouse, BIlly is willing to bet that whatever bad shit went down with him started there. But that doesn't mean that Max and her freaky friends are as clueless as Billy is. After all, they were at Starcourt the night of the disaster too. 

Max looks down to the floor. “I don’t know. I wasn’t here. I was having a sleepover at a friend’s.”

Billy sneers at the lie. “All your friends are boys.” 

She shakes her head. Billy suddenly flashes to the other girl that had been at the hospital the night of the explosion. The one with a bandage covering half her leg and another huge bandage on her forehead. “I don’t know what happened that night,” Max says quietly. 

Billy doesn’t believe her. “Then we don’t have shit to talk about. Get out of my room.” Turning his back on her, he crosses to the window, grabbing onto the sill with white knuckles. He exhales smoke into the night air, his breath hissing with frustration. 

When he doesn’t hear Max leave, he slams his palm down on the windowsill and spins around. “What?” he barks. 

Max is holding her arms against her chest. She looks smaller than her five foot nothing. Her already big eyes seem almost moon sized tonight. If Billy was a different person, he assumes he might feel empathetic for her or some shit. But Billy is not a different person. Billy is the son of Hargrove Sr. and empathy simply isn’t in his vocabulary. 

He is also his mother’s son, though. He might not remember it most of the time, but something about the way Max is chewing her bottom lip pulls at some long forgotten memory of his mom doing the same thing. His mom pulling him into her arms and promising things would be okay. And even though he knew she was lying, he held her close and pretended to believe. 

“Hey,” he says, forcing his voice into something near calm, “whatever you’re scared of, it hasn’t got a chance against me. I might think you’re a bitch, but you’re a bitch in my family. If someone is scaring you, I’ll gut them, got it?”

Max nods slowly, her gaze locked on Billy. It makes him uncomfortable, especially when the tension lessens in her stance, like Billy’s words comfort her. He’s not sure he wants to be responsible for Max’s well being, especially since he can barely stand her or her stupid bitch of a mom. 

“So,” he juts his chin in her direction, “you can, like, go to bed, or whatever now, okay?”

In the blink of an eye, Max darts across the room and wraps her arms around his chest, hugging him as hard as her skinny little arms can. Billy stiffens instantly, but some innate human response has him patting her awkwardly on the back with his left hand, his right holding his cigarette away from them both so he doesn’t ash in her hair. 

“What is it?” he asks, a little freaked out now. 

He and Max have never shared anything close to family feelings. They don’t even have small inside jokes they smile at. The closest they’ve gotten to siblings is Billy shoving her around when she’s annoying him or in the way. This sudden influx of touch is overwhelming and not welcome. Still - something holds Billy back from prying her off. Maybe it’s the desperation in her embrace, or the fact that she’s got her head tucked up right beneath his chin, like this big reminder of just how tiny she is. 

“You’re kind of horrible,” she whispers, “but I still love you, Billy.”

Billy’s lips curl at the sentiment, his left hand covering her shoulder and pushing her away carefully. “Max, what’s wrong? Are you dying or some shit? Has my dad - did he -?”

Her red hair flies as she shakes her head vigorously. “No! It’s just - you almost died, and that scared me, and made me think - I don’t know. Just - just you’re my brother and I’m your sister whether we like it or not. And - I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.” 

He eyes her warily, on the lookout for any more attempts at hugging or familial declarations. “Okay . . . Well, I’m fine now. And it’s late. So, go to bed, okay?”

Max nods, dropping her eyes to the floor. She leaves quietly, slipping the door shut behind her. 

Billy stays rooted to the spot, cigarette slowly smoldering in his hand. What the actual fuck? Max can’t stand him, this Billy knows because the feeling is mutual. And there is nothing Billy has done to her to earn that kind of family devotion. It unnerves him. She knows something, Billy’s certain of it, and whatever it is, it terrifies the absolute hell out of her.

~*~*~*~

Billy can’t work at the pool anymore, not with his still healing scar and the apparent MIA he pulled prior to the Starcourt Disaster. Regardless, the Chevelle still needs gas and Billy needs money to blow on hair products, smokes, and beer. So he’s working pizza delivery. He gets to drive his own car, doesn’t have to wear a stupid uniform, and gets to flirt with the hot girls and fuckable wives he meets in dimly lit doorways.

Pulling into the driveway of his current order, he glares out the windshield. The downside to this job is having to deliver to the shitheads he goes to school with. There’s something demeaning about handing off a box of pizza to an asshole like Tommy when Billy knows he can wipe the floor with him at basketball. 

Billy rings the doorbell, holding down just a second too long to be a dick. A few moments later the door swings up and there is Tommy, grinning at him. 

“Holy shit! Hargrove! I didn’t know you were doing the pizza route! What the shit! I thought you were still in the hospital or something.” Tommy reaches out for a bro-five.

Billy shoves the pizza into Tommy’s chest, grinning his best shit eating grin. “Nah, got sprung a couple weeks ago. Where’s my tip, douchebag?” 

“Ah, man, no way! Catch me up! It was full lockdown with the whole government conspiracy thing.” Tommy does spirit fingers with his left hand, pizza tucked between the triangle of his arm and hip. “Crazy ass shit about Heather though. I know you two were going out before - well - “ He looks uncomfortable. 

Billy tucks his bottom lip between his teeth, taking in this new information with a feigned ease. “Yeah, well, shit happens, right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tommy nods uneasily. “Do you, like, remember anything from that night? Everyone’s been all fucking hush hush about it and -“

“I got blown up, Tommy,” Billy says with annoyance. “Most I remember is waking up in the hospital with a giant hole in my chest.” He looks over his shoulder at the idling Chevelle. “Anyway, I gotta -“

“Yeah! Yeah, of course.” Tommy shoves a neat stack of bills in Billy’s direction. “But, hey, stop by sometime! We can play a game of pick up or -“

Billy turns around, leaving Tommy mid-sentence. If Billy hadn’t enjoyed Tommy’s company overly much in school he sure as hell isn’t going to seek the idiot out and spend deliberate time with him. Besides, Billy has more important things to focus on. Like figuring out when the hell he started dating Heather before Starcourt.

Billy slides onto his leather front seat. He tilts down the rear view mirror to see his reflection, tries to imagine what he would have said when he asked Heather out. Absolutely nothing comes to mind. Heather was a babe, but she wasn’t his type. She was too in awe of Billy. Too preppy. He enjoyed her enamored looks and daily ‘looking good, Billy’ when they had worked at the pool, but beyond that, she left him cold. There was nothing fiery enough about her to make Billy think the sex would be hot and frenzied. 

“Shit,” he mumbles, rubbing a fist against his temple. “Shit!” He slams the gear shift into reverse and pulls out of Tommy’s driveway. 

Billy doesn’t particularly like people. He thinks most of them are dumb as shit and the rest are fucking hypocrites who look down their noses at him but secretly wish they either were Billy or at least fucking him. So it’s not exactly like he has a plethora of people he thinks of as friends, at least not in this piece of shit town. California had been different, where he ran with a crowd of guys just like him. 

Here, the closest anyone came to reminding him of Tyler or Shawn had been fucking Steve Harrington, but the guy had ended up being nothing but a fucking joke. At the start, when Billy first got to Hawkins, Billy had been interested in going Mano-o-Mano with Steve, but that hadn’t played out. Harrington had been all caught up on his ex-girlfriend, the very epitome of preppy, Nancy Wheeler. If things had gone different, Billy figures Steve could have been his friend. Instead, he was this weird entity that Billy scorned for not being what everyone else had promised King Steve was. 

In the end, Steve was some kind of freak who hung around with a bunch of thirteen-year-olds and who had a good right hook but couldn’t fight to save his life. If Max hadn’t been a fucking psychotic bitch that night and hit Billy in the neck with a goddamn tranquilizer, Billy would have left Harrington a mess on Byers’ floor in need of some serious medical assistance. For being such a fucking disappointment. For thinking he could take Billy in a fight. For just being there when Billy was so full of rage at his father. 

And yet. 

Harrington was there that night at Starcourt. He was there and so were all of Max’s freaky friends. Just like they had been the night Billy almost got his dick smashed off by a baseball bat with nails in it. The same night there was some weird explosion out on one of the farms. 

Billy looks at the car clock, he’s got an hour left on his shift and then he’s going to pay King Steve a visit at his shiny house in Billy’s very own subdivision. Seems they have more in common than Billy originally thought.

~*~*~*~

In terms of the subdivision, the one Billy shares with Steve isn’t particularly small. It’s this long, sprawling lane that forks off. It has three tiers of homes. The first stretch on the straight road is where Billy lives, the nice homes, but not nice enough to have a third garage or swimming pool. At the fork, to the left is the second tier, those homes with the third garage; to the right is the third tier, Steve’s tier. The tier with a third floor, a third garage, a fucking swimming pool, and more rooms than the fucking Brady Bunch would need.

The way the streets sprawl towards the fork means that if he wanted to, Billy could drive his car to Harrington’s house. But, given that Billy isn’t supposed to leave the house without telling his dad where he is going, Billy elects to walk instead.

Pushing up his window, Billy crawls out onto the roof over the porch. He crouch-walks to the left side of the porch and climbs down the wooden ladder he’s propped up there under the pretense of cleaning out the gutters. Landing on his feet at the bottom, he looks back up and sees Max staring intently down at him from her window. 

He glares in her direction, daring her to say shit to their parents. In answer, she holds up her pinkie. Billy thinks she’s lost her fucking mind. Then Max holds up her other hand and locks her pinkies together. It stupid and childish but so is Max. She’s pinkie swearing she won’t rat him out and he gives her the middle finger in thanks. 

Billy pulls out a smoke as he walks, flicking his lighter open and lighting up. Summer is slowly fading into the fall, but the air is still humid. Only half of the houses have their porch lights on. It’s more an indication of the ghost town Hawkins has become than lack of neighborly feeling. There’s been talk about whether or not Hawkins High will have enough students to support the staff or if they’ll need to start busing kids to the next school district over. 

Billy doesn’t have to worry about that because he graduated with Harrington and the rest of the idiots on the basketball team. Though what he plans to do once September rolls around is still a mystery. He’s technically an adult now, he could fuck off he if wanted to. And while that is the main interest in his life right now, there’s still the matter of how he would afford to leave. Getting back to California isn’t going to be cheap. 

Then there’s Hargrove Sr. holding the college money over his head like an axe. Billy does not give a shit about going to college, but ever since the settlement, the Old Man has been hellbent on seeing his only child graduating with a degree. If the asshole has anything to say about it, Billy will be going to the nearest university so Hargrove Sr. can drop in for unexpected visits to talk shit about Billy’s academic efforts and maybe give him a good slap or two. 

Billy spikes his spent cigarette to the ground and crushes it beneath his heel. Fuck, he hates this place. He looks at the forking of the road, if he turns left, he can stop by Jenny Callingway’s and try to win a pity fuck out of her. If he turns to the right, he’ll confront Steve Harrington and that vast, black, emptiness that represents this summer. 

Billy turns right, cast a look over his shoulder as if he expects to see someone following him. He’s been doing that a lot, if he’s being honest with himself. Ever since coming home from the hospital, Billy can’t shake this feeling that he’s being watched. Or that there’s someone right behind him, a shadow with ghostly fingers brushing against the backs of his shoulders. He hates it. 

It’s another five minutes before Billy gets to Steve’s looming house, all three stories, third garage, and fucking swimming pool. He sneers at the house and the ostentatious wealth it screams out. 

“Jesus,” Billy says under his breath, shaking his head. How that shithead can have this house and decent looks but still strike out with a girl like Nancy Wheeler blows Billy’s mind. Though, Nancy must be a freak because she’s dating that freak Byers. Birds of a feather fuck together, or whatever. 

Billy walks up to the front door, pastes on his most charming grin in case a parent answers the door, and rings the doorbell. 

Billy hears Steve’s voice call from inside, “I’ve got it!” A few seconds later, the door pulls open and Steve stares out at him. “Oh,” Steve says, his features going flat.

“Who is it?” comes the phantom voice of Steve’s mother. 

“That guy who busted up my face that one time,” Steve says, talking over his shoulder. 

“Oh! Honey, should I call the police?” his mother asks, panic edging her words. 

Billy grimaces, steeling himself for a frantic mother and an irrational father. Instead, Steve says, “No, I’ve got this, Mom.” He steps out onto the porch, pulling his front door shut behind him. “The fuck are you doing here, Hargrove?”

Billy lets his charming grin fall. “You and I have shit to discuss.”

“The hell we do,” Steve counters, arms crossing over his chest. “As far as I’m concerned, you died in that mall, and I have shit all to say to you.”

Weirdly, this remark stings and Billy finds himself stepping forward into Steve’s space, furious. “Fuck you,” he spits. 

Steve shrugs. “Whatever, man. Get off my porch.” 

This is not what Billy had been anticipating. Granted, he and Steve have never had a particularly friendly exchange. But, he’d been banking on his own near death experience to have softened Steve toward him. It’s apparent that this is not the case. 

“What were you doing at the mall? Why was I there? When the fuck did I ever date Heather?” This last question comes out less demanding than it does bewildered. And that is seemingly what breaks Steve from his stance of getting Billy off his porch. 

“Heather?” Steve asks, frowning. “From school?”

“Yeah,” Billy says, jerking his head in a slight nod. “Tommy said I was going out with her and that’s why I was at the mall with her and her family that night.” 

Steve’s eyes go wide. “That is not why you were at the mall.”

“Then why was I?” Billy flings his arms out, working to keep his voice quiet enough not to alarm Mrs. Harrington, who Billy is positive is lurking on the other side of the door. 

Steve shakes his head. “Man, I can’t help you with this. And honestly, you don’t want to know, okay? You’re better off not remembering.”

“Bullshit,” Billy hisses, eyes narrowing. “You don’t know shit about what’s good for me. If I say I want to know, it’s because I do. And you better start telling me what you know before -“

Steve cuts him off with a huff of laughter. “Before what? Before you try smashing my face in again?” He lifts his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Would you like to take a better shot than the Russians? I mean, they only left me with a broken nose and orbital bone, maybe you think you can do some more permanent damage? Maybe knock some teeth out?”

The caustic acceptance in Steve words gives Billy some serious pause. He looks Harrington up and down, pays close attention to his face, the fine scar in his eyebrow, the slight bend of his nose where it hasn’t healed perfectly. 

“I’ve got scars too,” Billy blurts, instantly pissed with himself for sounding like such an idiot. 

To his surprise, Steve’s stance softens, his arms falling to his sides. “Yeah, I guess you would, with what happened.” He tilts his head at Billy. “You serious about this? Because this is some for real Pandora’s Box shit, okay?”

Billy squares his jaw. “Yes, I’m serious, Harrington. You think I’d fucking walk to your house otherwise? I’ve got plenty of better things to be doing with my nights.” 

Steve shrugs. “Alright.” He turns around and opens the door to his house. “Mom, I’m inviting this guy in, okay? His name’s Billy Hargrove and he’s an asshole, but he’s going to help me out with some of my college apps, okay?”

As Billy suspected, Mrs. Harrington, a petite woman with softly pretty looks, is hovering nervously just inside the doorway. She looks at Billy anxiously, takes in his appearance and grabs at Steve’s wrist. “Are you sure, Stevie? Is he making you say that?”

“Mom,” Steve laughs, swooping down to kiss her cheek. “I promise, for as badass as Billy thinks he looks, he’s actually decent at English and came over to apologize for what he did in the fall. Isn’t that right, Hargrove?” Steve turns and stares Billy down. 

Billy’s fucking furious, but if he wants answers, he has to play along. “Yes, Ma’am.” He flashes her his best smile. “I’m very sorry about what happened with Steve. We had a misunderstanding about why my sister was hanging out with him and her friends.”

“Oh, this is about the poor Byers’ family?” Mrs. Harrington lets go of her son, stepping back to welcome Billy into her home. “I’m just so glad Joyce has finally decided to put the house up for sale. This town has been nothing but trouble for her since her husband ran off. And really, I shouldn’t gossip, but -“

“Mom,” Steve interrupts, “we’re going upstairs now. Love you.” 

“Oh, right, of course, dear. If you boys need anything, just let me know.” She smiles uncertainly at Billy, who has to resist his urge to wink at her just to watch her squirm. 

Instead, he follows Steve up his rounded staircase to the second floor. They go to the end of the hall where Steve’s room is. Of course, Steve’s bedroom looks out onto the pool. Douchebag. 

Steve shuts and locks the door to his room. Billy gets an itchy feeling between his shoulder blades, like he’s been locked into a small space with Steve instead of a bedroom the size of Billy’s and Max’s combined. 

“So,” Billy prompts, “the fuck happened?”

Steve sighs enormously, leaning his full weight against his dresser, ankles crossed. “A lot of fucking shit, Hargrove. Let’s start with what you do know.”

“I know Max and her weirdo friends were at the mall too. That you, that band nerd Robin, Nancy, Creepy Byers, and some parents were there too. Plus all the people that died. I don’t know how any of us got out. I don’t know anything about the summer after - “ he breaks off. 

You don’t just tell a guy that the last thing you remember is driving to a motel to meet up with the guy’s ex-girlfriend’s mom. Well, you could, and Billy kind of wants to just to get a rise of Steve, but he decides to play it safe instead and say nothing. 

Steve stares at him. “After what? I know you started getting weird at the pool. The whole town practically had a city wide alert when you started wearing your shirt on duty.” 

Billy smirks at this. “What, Harrington, you jealous?”

“I was wearing a sailor hat and short shorts, of course I was jealous,” Steve answers honestly. 

“Why the hell were you wearing that?” Billy asks, disgusted. He was serious when he called Steve a pretty boy, and it’s against nature to not own up to what god gave you. 

“I had a job, just like you,” Steve says. “Mine just had a twisted sense of humor when it came to uniforms. So why’d you start wearing shirts?”

Billy looks around Steve’s room, the scattering of old high school textbooks, the well made bed, the stereo and piles of cassettes on his desk. He takes a seat on the edge of Steve’s bed, just to push Steve’s buttons and so he doesn’t feel like he’s being interrogated. “I don’t know,” he says with feigned indifference. 

Eyeing Billy on his bed, Steve wrinkles his nose as if Billy is ingraining dirt or some shit into his perfect blue comforter. “Did you ask your sister about any of this?”

“She’s not my sister,” Billy snaps. 

“Can’t blame her,” Steve says with a lift of his brows, “I wouldn’t want to be related to you either.”

Billy sneers and flips Steve the middle finger. So far this conversation isn’t giving him anything but a headache. “Do you actually know anything or are you just fucking wasting my time, Harrington? Because if you wanted to get me into your bedroom so bad, you could have just asked.” He licks his tongue over his front teeth. 

Steve blinks, unimpressed. “Does that work with all the girls, or just the moms?”

Billy’s eyes dart to Steve, annoyance prickling along his shoulders. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Please,” Steve rolls his eyes. “Everybody at Hawkins High knows you were trying to pick up Nancy Wheeler’s mom at the pool. Which is fucking gross, by the way. Wanting to screw someone who could literally be your mom, that is not hot, that’s just pathetic.”

Billy’s laughs, throaty, the way he does when he flirts. “You jealous you can’t even pick up a band nerd, Harrington? First, Nancy the priss dumps you on your ass and takes up with that fucking freak Byers. Then the band nerd turns down her nose at you? Even I heard about that diss and I was in the fucking hospital.” 

“You don’t know shit about Nancy and you don’t know shit about Robin, so back the fuck off. And I’d rather get dumped by both of them than even think of stooping to asking for a fuck with somebody’s mom.” Steve shakes his head, expression radiating disgust. 

“Oh please, Harrington, just because your dick isn’t even big enough to interest anyone our age, you don’t have to be all sob story that I can get anyone I want.” Billy leers at Steve, looking him up and down, pausing for emphasis at his crotch. 

“You can leave anytime,” Steve says, refusing to rise to Billy’s bait. “Good luck asking Mrs. Wheeler about your missing days. I’m sure she knows tons that could help you out with that.” Steve gestures to his door. 

Billy hates that Steve has something he wants. With a sneer, Billy sits back on Steve’s bed. “So enlighten me then, Harrington, what is it you claim to know, because so far all I’ve heard from you is bullshit.”

“Right,” Steve bobs his head, a cold laugh escaping his lips. “Bullshit. Yeah, okay.” Steve walks to his window, takes a look out at the dark sky, then turns to face Billy again. There’s a darkness to his expression that makes Billy uneasy. It’s the same kind of look he catches on his own face after he and his Old Man have had a ‘talk.’ 

“The scar I’ve got,” Billy starts, running his hand against his shirt where the scar is hidden, “it doesn’t look like something you get in a mall explosion or fire or whatever. I don’t know what it looks like, but it doesn’t look -“ He breaks off, pissed that he can’t find the words he wants to explain it.

“Natural,” Steve finishes for him. “It doesn’t look natural.”

Billy jerks his head in a nod. 

Steve zeroes in on the center of Billy’s white t-shirt, where the scar is, as if he saw it being made. For all Billy knows, he did. “You’re not going to believe the truth,” Steve says without lifting his gaze. 

“Try me, Harrington.”

Steve meets Billy’s eyes, he flutters his lashes as if this entire conversation bores him. “Beings, from an alternate dimension, broke through into our dimension, and one of their species, the most powerful one, took over your body. Possessed you. Made you do a ton of horrible shit, and then tried to kill you. It would have succeeded too, if the gate to its world hadn’t been closed in time.”

Billy stares at Steve. When Steve doesn't laugh, Billy glares viciously. “You are so fucking dead, Harrington. You wasted my time to spin me the dumbest bullshit I’ve ever heard? And you seriously thought I’d leave here without splitting your lip?”

Steve shrugs, unconcerned. “Take your best shot, man. It’s not going to change my story. That’s the truth. Ask Nancy the priss, Byers the freak, Robin the band nerd, Max your sister. They’ll all tell you the same thing.” 

A rushing fills Billy’s ears, his heart beating an anxious tattoo against his chest. What Steve’s saying, it’s impossible. It’s fucking stupid. He stands up abruptly, shoves Steve hard in the chest. The back of Steve’s head cracks against the window, a sound that satisfies the vicious part of Billy. 

“Fuck you,” he spits as he stalks out the bedroom door. He takes the stairs two at a time and thuds out the front door before Mrs. Harrington can wish him a goodnight. 

Billy storms home, his mood pitch black. He’s absolutely furious he wasted time at Harrington’s. Even more furious with himself for believing Harrington would actually help him out. The next time Billy sees Steve’s shitty car on the road, he’s going to T-bone it.

~*~*~*~

Sleep doesn’t happen that night. Like it hasn’t happened ever since he came home from the hospital. Tonight, though, Billy rolls from side to side, vague shadows chasing each other in his mind’s eye. Red lightning crackles through the darkness every now and then, along with a voice that makes his stomach turn.

Stupid fucking Harrington with his Twilight Zone bullshit. Billy’s beyond pissed that he let it get to him, the stupid shit Harrington was going on about. None of it’s true because Billy isn’t fucking insane. 

It’s time Billy got over it. He was in a freak accident at the mall. He was there with Heather and her family because he picked Heather up while he was lifeguarding at the pool. He got amnesia from the explosion, he nearly died, he survived with an ugly scar on his chest. That’s it. That’s all. 

So why, when he looks in the mirror, does he sometimes imagine black veins running beneath his skin? Why does he cringe when the sun seems too bright out, his elbow aching with a phantom burn? Why can he lift more than he’s ever been able to? Why did he stop outside the abandoned factory? Why does Max look at him like she’s waiting for him to disappear? 

“Fuck!” Billy shouts, punching his fist into his pillow as hard as he can. 

He lays back against the mattress, holding his body perfectly still, eyes squeezed shut. He breathes in and out evenly, trying to force his body into sleep. His fingers ache from the clenched fists he can’t make himself relax. 

It’s too hot in his room even with the fan on and his window open. It’s too dark too. When he opens his eyes he can’t see anything. And he’s not scared of the fucking dark, but the blackness is giving him a headache. He needs some light. Maybe a fucking smoke. 

A soft whine distracts Billy from his whirling thoughts. Billy’s attention latches onto it immediately. He quiets his breathing to listen harder. It comes again, this faint cry, like someone caught and trying to get free. 

Billy props himself up in bed, tilts his head to the side, listening intently. 

He hears it again. Louder this time, and clearly coming from Max’s room. 

Billy eases back on the bed. He knows she’s fine, having a nightmare or something like that. Nothing worth getting out of bed for. 

Still, when she cries out again, like she’s scared, Billy’s bare feet hit the wooden floor boards. He crosses to his door, sticking his head out into the hallway. He can hear his dad snoring in the room down the hall. And there’s Max again. 

From here, he can tell that she’s actually saying something. 

Not something. Billy’s name. 

Shivers chase themselves down his arms as Billy’s feet fly against the hallway carpet. He wrenches open Max’s door and skids to a stop at the edge of her bed. She’s moving restlessly in her sheets, red hair spread out around her pillow. 

“Billy,” she cries softly. “Billy, no!” 

Billy grabs her by the shoulder and shakes. “Max, hey, Maxine! Wake up!”

She clutches at his wrist, anchoring him to her. “B-Billy?” she gasps, eyes springing open. 

“Yeah, it’s me.” He’s crouched over her, something like worry eking itself into his consciousness. 

Max breathes out shakily. Then she hunches up and wraps her arms around his neck, pulling him down to her. Her cheeks are wet against the curve of his shoulder. “Oh my god, Billy.” 

“Hey, hey, you're fine,” Billy says, trying to disentangle himself and succeeding in nothing more than falling back on his ass onto the bed. Max takes this as an opportunity to wedge herself against his side. “Max, Jesus, chill!” 

Max is not a crier. Billy has to dig in hard to bring her to tears when he’s fucking furious with her. Even when he broke her skateboard, she didn’t so much as well up. Now she’s got full on tear tracks smearing against his skin and Billy is fully freaked out. 

“Do you need me to get your mom or something?” he asks. His left hand finds its way to the back of Max’s head, and under pain of death, Billy will deny stroking his step-sister’s hair in a somewhat soothing gesture. 

“No! No, not Mom.” Max squeezes him tighter, doing a great impression of a python. “It was just a dream. A stupid dream. But you were there and - and you scared me.” 

“Scared you?” Billy frowns, cheek somehow propped against the crown of Max’s head. 

All of this has Billy’s senses screaming overload. He does not get close with people unless it’s a girl he’s fucking into a headboard. This - this is so far from that and if he could, he would just shove Max away, but she’s attached to him like fucking crazy glue. 

“I mean, you scare me normally,” Max says on a breathless rush. “Because you’re such a dick and it’s like you enjoy being as awful to me as you can, and sometimes I think you’re not going to pull your hand back and you really are going to hit me, and I don’t know why you hate me so much. But this was different, this was you but it wasn’t you and you weren’t just going to hit me, you were going to hurt me bad, and -“

Billy tears himself away from her, dropping to his knees with an audible thud. Jesus, is this really what she thinks of him? That he’s a monster just like his dad? He grasps her shoulders between his much bigger palms and makes sure she’s looking at him. 

“Max, stop it,” he says harshly. 

She blinks at him, like she’s only now realizing she’s fully awake. She shifts under his grip, like she’s waiting for him to squeeze until it hurts.

Billy’s stomach churns. He loosens his hold. “I’m not going to hurt you, Max, okay? I’m probably going to break your shit when you piss me off because I’m an asshole, but I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You nearly fucking killed Steve and you tried to strangle Lucas,” Max says evenly. 

Billy growls. “That’s different, you got it? If Lucas - if my dad - “ 

Max waits him out. He wishes he could just shove her away and go back to his room, lock his door and this conversation behind him. And why can’t he? Before the hospital, he would have. He would have sneered in her face and left her scared of him. 

Now, now he just crumbles. He gets up, sits on the bed next to her and glares at her closed bedroom door. “You know my dad, Max. You know he flips out on me about shit because he’s a bastard. If he saw you with Lucas -” Billy casts a sideways glance at her, Max is staring at him, riveted. “Max, come on, you know my Old Man. If he saw you with Lucas, Lucas Sinclair who is black, he would hit you the way he hits me. And I wouldn’t let him, Max. Which means he’d hit me instead. So yeah, if I had to scare the living shit out of Lucas to protect myself, then I was going to.”

“My mom wouldn’t let your dad do that,” Max says quietly.

Billy looks her full in the face, his eyes wide with disbelief. “Max, are you serious? Your mom doesn’t stand a chance against my Old Man.” 

“To me,” Max says even more quietly. “She wouldn’t let him do that to me.”

“Yeah,” Billy’s eyebrows jump higher, “which is why he would do it to me.”

“Not if I talked to my mom first,” Max continues. “I haven’t brought Lucas around because, I mean, who would want to hang out at our house? But my mom knows he’s my boyfriend. If I told her I was scared your dad would be weird about it,” she trails off. 

Billy closes his eyes and breathes through his nose. This kid is so fucking dense. “Whatever, Max. My point is, the thing with Lucas was different. The thing with Steve -” he breaks off and shakes his head. “I wanted to break something that night, okay? So I broke Steve. Until,” he points out with another look in her diretion, “until you stabbed me with a fucking tranquilizer and threatened my junk with a goddamn monster baseball bat.”

Max snorts. “You deserved it.”

A smirk curves the corner of Billy’s mouth. “You’re such a bitch.”

“I was protecting myself and my friends,” she says loftily. 

“Yeah, like a crazy bitch.” He jostles her shoulder with his. Then he offers her his hand. “Truce?”

Maybe it’s how soft Max has been lately. Sneaking into his room at night to confide her worries. Hugging him. Saying bullshit like she loves him. But right now, he kind of wants things to be okay with them. He’s not saying she’s his sister or some shit. But maybe he’s willing to concede Max isn’t the enemy. 

Max watches him, as if waiting for him to take it back. When he doesn’t, she nods slowly. “Truce.” Then she fixes him with a look. “You’re already intimidating without beating people up or running middle schoolers off the road, you know that, right?” she adds. 

Billy pulls a face. “Quit while you’re ahead. I still don’t like your freaky friends.” He stands up, nerves jangling up and down his arms. “Now go to sleep, okay?”

Max lies down, curling up into her blankets. Billy waits until she closes her eyes before walking quietly back to his room. 

Billy’s heart, if he has one, is very dried up, like the grinch, two sizes too small. The only room he has in his heart is for himself and a space carved out for his mom. But, he has a horrifying notion that Max is slowly clawing her way in there as well, leaving a bloody mess in her wake.

Back in his room, Billy climbs into bed, closes his eyes, and pretends he’ll be able to fall asleep.

~*~*~*~

It’s August, which leaves Billy with a month before he needs to figure out what to do next. That’s a month of making pizza deliveries, saving up some money to get his own fucking place, and attending the same shitty parties he did during the school year. Today’s shitty party is at Vivienne’s, a chick from Billy’s Pre-Calc class who has a pool, meaning it’s off the right fork of the subdivision road. Everybody’s in bikinis and swim trunks.

Since Billy’s not a lifeguard anymore, he can wear his board shorts instead of the standard issue little red briefs. He’s wearing a t-shirt because there isn’t a chance in hell he’s showing off his scars yet. Casing out the other party goers through the tint of his sunglasses, Billy curls his lips. None of these fucking yuppies would know an ocean from a lake. The biggest body of water they’ve ever seen is the fucking quarry. 

It makes Billy ill if he thinks too long about how bumfuck everyone in Hawkins is. Not a single idiot he went to school with knew what O’Neill was when he’d worn is O’Neill t-shirt to school. They kept asking if it was a new clothing company. 

When he’d told Max this, they’d shared a surprising moment of comradery. Back in California, not knowing one of the original surfing brands was tantamount to not knowing the fucking Pledge of Allegiance. Here, at Vivienne’s, Billy’s wearing his O’Neill board shorts and glaring down everyone in their J.C. Penny trunks. 

Hawkins utter lack of fashion continues to be unsurprising for Billy as much as it is dismal. Nobody in this town seems to give a fuck about anything except the high school sports teams. It’s utterly uninspiring. Billy stakes out a foldout pool chair, spreading his towel across it and lying down on his stomach. 

“Billy!” a shrill female voice calls. “Oh my god, Billy, you came! I didn’t think you would! You were, like, totally MIA for the last month. You didn’t even go to Tommy’s rager of a party!”

Billy turns his head to the side, glaring up through his sunglasses at Trina, a girl he fucked once back in the spring sometime. “Yeah, well, when you’re in the hospital, they don’t really let you out much.” He closes his eyes and ignores her presence. She wasn’t that good of a lay. 

“Oh my gosh,” Trina gasps. Her hand strokes down his spine through his shirt and Billy jerks at the touch. “That’s why you’ve got this on, right? Because of - “ she drops her voice conspiratorially, “the Starcourt Disaster? You were there that night, right? With Heather? Isn’t it, like, so tragic?”

Billy counts to ten in his head. He figures now is not the time to shove this bitch into the deep end. It’s true he’s been avoiding the party scene to avoid this exact exchange. But he thought after running into Tommy yesterday, the news of his resurrection would have already made the rounds. 

“Hey, Trina,” a new voice intercedes. “I know Mrs. Goldberg spent a full week teaching us the meaning of the word ‘tact,’ in case it came up on college applications. So why don’t you go learn it?”

“Geez, Steve,” Trina says, sounding hurt. “I was just asking.”

“Well, just don’t,” Steve responds. 

The end of Billy’s chair dips under the weight of an additional person. Billy knees Steve’s ass as hard as he can. Steve smothers Billy’s face under his hand in return. 

“Fuck!” Billy shouts, wrenching up right and finger combing his hair back into place. “Fuck you, man.”

“After I just gallantly saved you from a conversation with Trina Whitman?” Steve arches an eyebrow. “You should be on your knees, Hargrove.” 

Billy eyes Steve suspiciously, mildly impressed that Steve looks pretty even in sepia tones. Billy decides to be magnanimous and forgive Steve for all the bullshit he was spouting yesterday since Steve did, in fact, save him from stupid fucking Trina. “Didn’t think you came to these things anymore, Harrington.”

At this, Steve makes a pointed face. “Didn’t think you did either.” 

“Yeah, well, beats hanging around the house.” Billy stretches back out on the chair, deliberately lying his legs across Steve’s lap. Steve doesn’t react which surprises Billy. After their exchange yesterday, he is expecting nothing less than hostility. 

“How long are you staying here?” Steve asks. 

Billy frowns. “The fuck should I know? I just got here. If the party’s good, I’ll stay, if it’s not, I’ll motor.”

Steve looks around them at the other high schoolers, some splashing each other in the pool, a few making out in the deep end, more drinking warm beer out of red solo cups. It’s not the most enticing party scene. 

“Why, you want to get me alone in your room again?” Billy asks, tilting his head to the side, tongue licking against his bottom lip. He can’t explain why he likes messing with Steve so much. Maybe it’s the way his eyes narrow just a little, or how his eyebrows ‘v’ with irritation. 

Ignoring this, Steve asks, “Did you walk or drive?”

“Waste of gas to drive,” Billy says, starting to be interested in what Steve wants to proposition. 

“Then let’s go.” Steve stands up. 

“Where?”

“Come on, Hargrove. I’m parked on the street.” Steve walks off without waiting to see if Billy will follow. 

The obstinate part of Billy wants to ignore Steve’s invitation, hang him out to dry. But the bigger part of Billy, the part that is still burning with questions, propels him from the chair and away from the party. 

Rounding the garage, Billy sees Steve at the driver’s side of his BMW, one hand on the roof. He grins when he sees Billy, though it quickly disappears. He pulls open the driver’s door and ducks inside. 

Without a glance back at the party, Billy crosses the yellowing grass and gets into the passenger side. “Are you gonna tell me where we’re going now?”

Steve glances sideways at him, a slight smile hanging from the corner of his mouth. A smile that’s not happy, one that’s more bemused. “I’m going to take you on a tour of Hawkins, the real Hawkins.”

“The hell are you talking about, Harrington?” Billy asks, cranking his window down and fucking with his seat position on the off chance either action annoys Steve.

Steve puts the car in drive and hits the stereo on. Men At Work’s ‘Down Under’ blares on and Billy covers both of his ears. Steve laughs at him, turning the volume down but not changing the station. “You’re such a poser, Hargrove. Everyone loves this song.”

“Every moron,” Billy counters. He reaches forward and slides through the channels, ignoring Steve’s glare. When he hears AC/DC, he stops and settles back into his seat. “This is fucking music.”

Steve flicks on his blinker and turns them out of the subdivision. “Music for posers.”

Billy smirks. Which, fuck him dead, Billy might actually be glad he left the party to follow Steve on a magical mystery tour. “You wouldn’t know good taste if it came up and bit you in the dick, pretty boy.”

The guys on the basketball team fell into two brackets. The bracket that treated Billy like the bastard he knows he is, and the one that treated Billy like the Keg King he also knows he is. Neither bracket treated him like someone that could fit into their world, which was fine with Billy, he’s better than all the trash in this town. Steve, though, Steve is proving himself to be every bit the opponent Billy had expected when he first heard about King Steve. 

“AC/DC have what? A handful of good songs?” Steve asks, cruising his rich kid BMW up to 50 on the farm road that stretches out in either direction.

Billy shoots Steve a surprised look that doesn’t go unseen. 

“Yeah, I know all your crummy poser bands,” Steve confirms, smirking. “I also know good music, like David Bowie and Tears for Fears.”

“Shit, did you see Labyrinth?” he teases.

Steve slows at the next road, blinker indicating he’s making a left. ‘If you didn’t think Bowie was badass as Jarrett, then you're a bigger idiot than I took you for.”

“Badass? His outfit was the shit. And his hair?” Billy shakes his head, his own hair brushing against his neck. “Fucking righteous.”

Steve laughs, shooting Billy an approving look, the only one he’s ever given him, not that Billy’s counting or any shit like that. “You went to see Labyrinth, seriously?”

“Max made me take her at the start of summer,” Billy admits. 

Steve sighed. “I know the feeling. The Brat Pack had me taking them too. That was before my job at Scoops though. After that they were sneaking in through the exit connected to our store.”

“Shit, really?” Billy turns a bit to better see Steve. “Is that why Max finally got off my back about going to movies?”

“Mhm,” Steve confirms. “That and free ice cream.”

“Whatever, it kept her away from the arcade that’s all I cared about. I fucking hated driving her there all the time.” 

It’s almost uncomfortable how easy it is to shoot the shit with Steve when they aren’t at each other’s throats. Billy would say he likes it, but he still thinks there’s something off with Steve; hanging out with a gang of kids all the time, working at a job that made him dress like two-year-old, not being impressed with Billy in general. 

“Well, I’d say your reprieve is over now, since the mall is a burnt husk.” Steve makes a face as he says this and they both fall quiet for a while. 

When Steve takes his next turn, Billy can tell they are driving deep into farmland. “You going to tell me where we are going, or should I assume you are taking me out somewhere secluded to try and kill me?” Billy snarks.

Steve smirks again. “Somewhere secluded, yeah, and the shock might kill you, no promises.” He slows for a stop sign, checks all directions, but doesn’t hit the gas. Instead, he turns to look at Billy full on. “You asked me yesterday about Hawkins and what happened to you. There’s not a lot that I can tell you that couldn’t be better explained by showing you. So I’m going to show you the real Hawkins and you can take it for what it is. Then you can stop bothering me, got it?”

Billy doesn’t know what to say, so instead he says, “Are you going to drive or what?” 

With a hollow laugh, Steve steps on the gas and eases them away from the crossroads. 

Billy leans over, invading Steve’s space, and chokes when he sees the speedometer. “Jesus, Harrington, you drive like a goddamn grandma.” 

“Some of us,” Steve says loftily, “obey the speed limit.”

“Yeah, jackasses.” 

Steve flips him off, but his foot presses down harder on the gas and they skip a few over the posted speed of 50. “We’ve got six locations on our tour today, Hargrove. They might not look like much now, but each has either killed someone or almost killed someone. Namely, your sister’s friends, myself, Nancy, or Jonathan.” 

“Not my sister,” Billy corrects. “And I’m having a hard time imagining a single thing in Hawkins that could kill anyone, besides boredom.” 

“Then you’d be dead wrong,” Steve says flatly.

~*~*~*~

It takes another ten minutes before Steve parks the car on a dirt road down a long, rambling driveway of some no name fuck’s abandoned farm. It’s not surprising it’s abandoned, the whole place looks like the ground has gone sour. Nothing is growing, there’s just this weird, off-white dead vegetation everywhere.

Steve unbuckles and gets out of the car. Billy follows suit and listens to the gross plants crunch under his flip-flops. He makes a face, looking at the strange grey oozing out of the vines intertwining the plants. 

“What is this shit?” he asks, jerking his head toward the disgusting mess under foot. 

“Welcome to Hawkins,” Steve says darkly. He picks his way through the field, each step echoing a crunch and leaving a trail of nasty grey ooze. He edges close to a large hole in the ground. 

Billy looks down at the hole, it’s pretty well cobwebbed over. “Nice hole.”

Steve doesn’t answer, just keeps staring at the hole. When a few minutes pass and he still doesn’t speak, Billy gets a little unnerved. 

“Yo, Steve?” He nudges Steve’s shoulder with his own. 

Steve snaps to attention, taking an exaggerated step back from the edge of the hole. “That,” he says, pointing at the hole, “was where I almost died.”

Honestly, Billy was expecting something a lot more impressive than a hole. “Because you fucking fell into it?” he guesses, annoyed. 

“No, asshole, because of what was inside that. It’s not a hole. It’s a tunnel that travels unimaginably far beneath Hawkins. It was filled with these creatures, Demodogs, Dustin called them -“

Billy feels his pulse spike with aggravation. “That idiot kid with no front teeth? That’s who you’re talking about? A fucking child said it was filled with - what was it? Special dogs? Jesus.” Billy turns on his heel, trying to figure out how long it will take him to walk back to his house from the middle of nowhere. 

Before he gets far, Steve grabs his wrist and jerks him to a stop. “Hey, I’m doing this because you asked me to, Hargrove, so back off all your macho shit, and listen to what I’m telling you. There are things in Hawkins that shouldn’t be. Things that should be impossible, but they’re not. Because I saw them, I fought them.”

His eyes are wide and anxious. It’s hard for Billy to meet his gaze because it’s obvious that Steve is in earnest. Which also means Steve is out of his fucking mind. Billy yanks his wrist away. “Yeah, okay, sure.” 

Billy keeps walking away, trying to figure out how he is going to force Max to stop hanging out with these freaks. No wonder she is having nightmares about things trying to kill her. She’s spending her time with actual nut jobs who are filling her head with these stories. Jesus. What is wrong with this town? Is it something in the water? The air?

Steve jogs up alongside him. “Yeah, I know, you don’t believe me. But do you remember the Byers’ house? The place with the nice kitchen where you tried to beat my face in?”

Billy shoots him a sideways glance and grudgingly nods his head. 

“I almost died there too. The first time I almost died, actually. A demogorgon, this fucking alien monster thing, ripped through the fucking wall and tried to kill me -“

“Dude - “ Billy stops cold and smacks his arm across Steve’s chest, “there is something wrong with you. And I’m probably not the first person who has told you this, but you are fucked in the head. All this shit you are talking about isn’t real. So fuck off and leave me alone. And tell your fucked up little friends to stay the hell away from my sister!” He slams his palms into Steve’s shoulders and knocks him on his ass. 

With that, he bolts to Steve’s car, where the keys are still hanging in the ignition. He turns the engine and burns out, gravel flying after him. He leaves Steve to find his own way home, because the guy is clearly a fucking lunatic and can go live in the goddamn hole in the ground for all Billy cares.

~*~*~*~

Billy ditches the car in the Harrington driveway and takes off for his house, anxiousness creeping under his skin like a living thing. He throws the door open to his house and hollers, “Maxine!”

Max comes skittering to the top of the stairs, mouth gaping. “What?”

“Get the fuck down here!” 

She practically jumps down the staircase. “What? What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

He grabs her by the arms, hard, but mindful not to be too hard. “You are not to see any of your friends, you fucking hear me?” he shouts. 

Max stares at him, wide-eyed, like he’s lost his damn mind. “Billy?” Her face scrunches up in confusion. 

“Max!” He shakes her. “I’m a fucking serious! Steve Harrington, that Wheeler kid, no teeth kid, your boyfriend - you don’t fucking know them anymore, you got it? You don’t see them, you don’t go to their houses, you don’t meet up with them at the arcade, you stay the fuck away from them! And if you don’t, I really will put them into the fucking hospital!” 

Max is trying to wrestle her way out of his grip, but he’s holding tight. “Billy! What the hell? Are you crazy? Let go of me!” 

“No! Not until you promise!” 

“What?” she scoffs. “To stop having friends? Fat chance!” 

“Max!” He shakes her again. “I am serious! Steve is crazy and so are the rest of them! I don’t want you seeing them! I don’t want you getting hurt - “ he breaks off, knowing he’s revealed too much, which is stupid, because like a week ago he wouldn’t have had anything to reveal in the first place. 

“Hurt?” Max stops moving around. “What do you mean?” She looks at him closely. “What have you heard? Who told you?”

“Told me?” Billy feels his eyes bug. “Told me? Max, Steve Harrington was rambling his brains out about demon dogs and Demi garbage and that is fucking crazy! He’s fucking crazy. Which means the children, actual children like you, Max, that he weirdly hangs out with are also fucking crazy! So no, you aren’t seeing them anymore. And I swear to god, Max, if you don’t promise me, I’m going to tell your mom all this shit and have her ban you from seeing them.” 

“Billy!” Max grabs both his hands in hers. Billy tears his hands away. “Billy,” she says again, reaching out for him more slowly. He steps away, because he can tell she is trying to placate him, that she isn’t listening to a word he is saying. 

“Promise me,” he repeats, voice gone deadly. 

Max shakes her head quickly. “No, I’m not promising you that. But I need you to tell me what Steve told you because I know it sounds crazy, Billy, but whatever it is, I’ve probably seen it too.” 

“What are you talking about?” Billy shouts, throwing his arms up into the air. He fucking knew it. He knew those freaks had gotten to her. Who even knows what they told her to convince her of their insanity. Max is a fairly smart kid, so it had to be something good to hoodwink her. Had they taken her out to that same fucking hole? 

“I know,” Max says, her voice aiming for a purposeful calm. “It all sounds crazy. But I’ve seen the demon dogs. I’ve seen - I’ve seen the Mindflayer. I’ve seen -“

“Shut up!” Billy shouts. “Shut the fuck up, Max! You don’t know what you’ve seen! You only know what they’ve told you. And they are fucking crazy! That’s fucking it - “ Billy says with a bewildered shrug and shake of his head, “ - I’m fucking telling your mom about this shit and -“

Max bounces onto her tiptoes and slaps her hand over his mouth, as if her mom is home right now to hear this shitfest. She isn’t. Both of their parents are at work until six tonight. 

“Billy, calm down!” She puts her other hand behind his head and pulls him down to her level. “Listen to me, I know how it all sounds, but I can prove it to you.” 

Billy runs both hands over his face, dislodging her hand from his mouth. “Jesus. Jesus, fine,” he says, thinking quickly. “How are you going to prove it to me?”

“I can show you it’s real.”

“Not the fucking hole in the ground!” 

“No! Not the hole,” Max denies quickly. “The lab. Or the mall!”

“Oh my god. Of course. The lab. Where these things are made, I assume?” He’s ten steps ahead, planning out how he’ll have to prove to Max that whatever she thinks she’s seen at this supposed lab is not real. That it’s either some sick joke by her deranged friend group. Or that her friend group is just straight out deranged. 

“No, not made. Where they come from. It’s the gate they use to enter our dimension,” Max explains, as if it makes any fucking sense. 

“Yeah, clearly, because that’s not insane.” He turns away from her and goes to the hall, grabbing his keys from the key hook. “Get in the car, Max. Show me this lab.”

~*~*~*~

Max is nervous on the ride over, fidgeting, and telling this never ending hallucination story about a girl named Eleven with magic powers, a fucking crack in the space time continuum, monsters called Demogorgons, their pets or something called Demodogs, the tunnel under Hawkins, the gate Eleven closed, and how this summer they found that something had gotten sealed out of the gate, trapped in Hawkins.

It’s all completely batshit crazy and Billy is actually starting to get a little scared that Max is going to need to see a shrink, because it’s clear she has completely bought into this delusion. 

She directs him to a dilapidated building surrounded by chain link fencing. The fencing has been broken through by a car shaped hole and Billy noses the Chevelle through the same way. They park in the deserted parking lot and Billy stares up at the building. 

It’s true, he never knew this building was here, but he can only imagine how many businesses go out in Hawkins. It’s not like it’s a happening place to be. “This is it?” he confirms.

“Yes.” Max unbuckles her seatbelt and steps out of the car. 

Billy follows her to the front doors. There’s a heavy chain holding them together, but it doesn’t really matter since the padlock is missing. He pushes the door open with his foot, realizing for the first time that he is standing here in his fucking flip flops, board shorts, and black t-shirt. As if this day couldn’t get any more bizarre. 

“Come on,” Max says, her voice pitched quiet. 

“Why have you been here?” Billy demands, trying to imagine any time when Max was away from him long enough to have come here unnoticed. 

“I haven’t been,” she admits. “Lucas told me about it.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Billy grabs her arm and stops her from walking any further into the abandoned gloom. 

“No, come on, Billy. If he’s wrong then - then you can tell my mom, alright?” She looks up at him, pleading, and Billy caves. 

“Fine, whatever, let’s just get this the hell over with.” 

They creep through the building, their footsteps echoing too loudly. With surprising accuracy, Max twists their way until they reach a strange research room. Billy is willing to admit it’s weird, the cemented over space in the wall, the observatory station, the place where large equipment was clearly previously held. But that’s it. Weird. 

“See,” Max insists, “it’s real.”

“Max,” Billy says, voice soft, worried. He hates that he’s worried about Max. “This is just some weird research lab. You get that, right?” He gestures around them. “You can see there is no giant crack in the universe spilling through monsters?”

When Max turns around to look at him, Billy sees a desperation in her that he’s never seen before. It gives him chills. Before he can think it through, he’s gathering her in close to him with his left arm around her shoulders. He hunches down so they are eye to eye. 

“Sometimes the monsters aren’t the creatures crawling in through the void, Max. Sometimes they are the people you think you are supposed to love and trust.” He knows as he speaks that he is talking both about himself and his father. That while his father is Billy’s monster, since moving to Hawkins, Billy has worked hard to be Max’s monster. And this time, shame instead of anger flutters in his chest. 

She nods, her big eyes somber. “I know that, Billy. But I also know this is true.” She gestures behind them with her hand. “You know the Russians had some crazy project underneath the mall. Everyone knows that. This is that project.” She points at the cemented over wall. 

Billy covers her hand so she isn’t pointing anymore and keeps it clasped in his own. “We’re leaving here now. This place is disgusting and probably filled with asbestos. But - “ he pauses as he leads her away from the abandoned lab “ - I’ll let you take me to the mall.”

~*~*~*~

He’s confident that once they get to the mall, Max will be able to look at the blown out remains and realize that while it’s conceivable that for some reason Russians infiltrated boring ass Hawkins and decided to blow up their mall as some type of terrorist attack, it is not conceivable they were letting aliens into the world.

Billy had always thought it was bullshit that people ever believed Orson Welles’ broadcast of War of the Worlds was real. But listening to Max chatter on about hiding out in a junk yard in a rusted out bus with only Steve and his nail bat to defend them, well it’s seeming really fucking reasonable that people thought aliens were invading. 

“Why do you spend this much time with Steve?” Billy demands, thoroughly concerned. 

Max looks at him, surprised. “Because he’s always there looking out for us.”

Billy lifts a hand from the steering wheel and rubs aggressively at his temples. “Or, he’s just being a fucking creep,” he counters. 

“You wouldn’t say that, not if you knew him,” Max argues angrily. 

This is clearly going to be a battle they have after he puts this alien delusion to rest. 

By the time they pull into Starcourt’s former parking lot, neither of them are speaking. The mall is a hulking presence in front of them. From their view point, you can’t see the blasted out ceiling. Or the huge hole blown through the floor. 

Right after the explosion, the place had been crawling with FBI and security. But after everything there was to discover had been hauled away in unmarked vans, the mall was deserted, just like everything gets deserted in Hawkins. So no one is there to watch Billy and Max walk across the vast asphalt parking lot to the East entrance of the mall. 

Max reaches out, taking hold of Billy’s hand. “Be careful, okay?”

He shoots her a quick look. “You’ve been here since the explosion?”

She shrugs. “We had to make sure everything was gone.” 

Jesus, it’s like she’s got a fucking death wish. Hanging out with freaks who hang around buildings just waiting to collapse. 

The glass is missing from the doors so they step right through, glass shards crunching under foot. Billy is extra careful where he steps, not in the mood to have his foot stabbed through his flimsy flip-flop. 

They can’t go far. Not more than fifteen feet before the tiled floor just disintegrates into a fucking huge hole blasted through the entire center of mall. Billy stares at it like it’s the fucking Grand Canyon. Such an incomprehensible space. 

Max squeezes his hand. “Do you remember being here?”

His eyes dart to the left. There’s rubble everywhere, but he starts picking his way in that direction. To these weird black sludge marks on the ground. And there’s this pounding in the back of his head, like a migraine that is going to blow his mind. 

Billy kneels down, swipes his fingers through the black stuff. It sticks to him. Max grabs his hand back, instantly scrubbing the marks off with the hem of her shirt. “Oh my god, Billy! Don’t fucking touch anything! Please? Oh my god!” 

“Hey,” Billy says, pulling gently away from her. “I’m okay, Max.” He holds up his hand for her to see, all of the black gone. 

But Max is frantic and she holds his face between her palms, her eyes running desperately over his face. “Don’t go away, Billy. Please don’t go back there.”

He frowns, covering her hands with his own. “Go where, Max?”

“To the Upside Down,” she whispers.

~*~*~*~

Billy feels his body whipsaw across the road, his car smashing into that thing, the thing in the road. And he’s in the parking lot of the old factory, staring at the broken grill of his car. There’s something in the factor. It’s screaming for him. He’s holding onto the stairs, screaming, terrified like he has never been in his life.

And then he’s moving on autopilot. His body functioning like a puppet held up by thorny strings. It hurts. Everything hurts. The sun. The heat. The sounds. There’s Heather. The factory basement. The rats. The voice. The creature, all devoured organs and screaming souls. 

Max at Heather’s house. The girl with dark eyes. They see through him. They see the thing pulling the strings. More bodies in the basement. The creature growing, breathing, consuming. And still it breathes through him, uses his mouth, his voice, his lungs. 

There’s a storm, so big and terrible that the ocean slips away from him. His mom, her beautiful blonde hair in the breeze. But he can’t hold onto the ocean. The creature yanks on the strings too hard, digs the thorns into his skin until he’s nothing but a torn up ghost. 

The girl with the brown eyes. Always there. Prying into him. Trying to find him. But he’s not there. He’s only this shell with the creature poured inside him. It can’t be stopped. It will destroy everything. It will swallow the sun and the earth will fall to ashes. 

It’s too much. All of it. He can’t even find the ocean anymore. There is no ocean. There was never any ocean. There was only this storm. The one with red lightning. And this pain, hollowing out his very soul. Soon he’ll be nothing. The creature will be all that there is and all there ever will be. 

The girl screams. She fights. She tries to find him one last time. She talks about the ocean. About the woman with blonde hair. She sees something inside the storm. And it shatters, the clouds and lightning receding like the waves of the ocean. 

Billy tries to fight for the girl. Because she saved him. Because he doesn’t want to die. Because he’s done terrible things with the creature inside of him. Except it’s too late. He can’t beat the creature. None of them can. 

He falls. It hurts more than anything else, falling back to earth. He’s dying, breathing his first breath since his car crashed. Max is there. She’s crying. She looks so pretty, her hair in stupid braids. He wishes he could have saved her. She’s something good, he thinks. And then he’s gone.

~*~*~*~

The Upside Down. Billy had been lost there for days. It had felt like lifetimes. Max’s hands are cold beneath his and against his cheeks. He blinks, the broken mall coming back into focus around him.

“Billy?” Max asks, her voice wavering. 

He looks up at her. Tears are slipping down her cheeks. She folds to her knees and throws her arms around him, anchoring him in a hug that he doesn’t think he deserves. 

Billy wraps his arms around her and holds her against his broken chest, carved into scars so he’ll never forget what happened. He can’t speak. There’s an emptiness where his words should be. 

“It’s okay,” Max whispers, her hands trembling against his back. “You came back. It’s okay.”

“What did I do?” he asks, his voice hoarse. 

“It wasn’t you, Billy. It was never you.” Max shakes her head rapidly against his shoulder, grinding her forehead into his collar bone. 

“What happened to the girl?” All he can see behind his eyelids are soulful brown eyes. 

“El, she’s okay too. You - you saved her, Billy.” Max tilts her head back to see him. 

Billy stands up, bringing Max up with him. “I want to go home now.”

She nods, taking his hand in hers once more. They walk out of the mall together. Billy swears to himself that he’s never coming back here.


	2. Home in the Darkness

Billy lays on his bed, his fan rotating above him. He had never dated Heather. He had killed her. And her mom. And her dad. Billy feels his heart beat steadily in his chest. He killed them. And twenty-seven other people in Hawkins. Billy listens to the crickets outside his window. 

He gets up, grabs a pair of basketball shorts and one of his sleeveless t-shirts. He pulls them on before lacing up his most beat up pair of All Stars. Then he throws one leg over his window sill and proceeds to sneak out of his house. 

When he gets to Steve’s house, he walks around the back, keeping out of the light cast by the porch lights. He skirts the edge of the pool, picks up a hand full of gravel from the flowered landscaping set against the house. He pitches the gravel at Steve’s window, hears it rattle off the glass, and steps back. 

The window pushes up almost immediately. A flashlight blares in his face and Billy tries to shield his eyes with his hand. Before he can say anything, the window slams shut again. 

Billy doesn’t know if he should throw more gravel or hightail it out of here before Steve calls the cops. He’s leaning towards getting the hell out of here because he doesn’t know what the fuck he is doing here in the first place. He’s just started to jog towards the street when a hand snares in the back of his shirt. 

Billy is jerked to a stop and he whirls around, first ready to crack against who ever’s holding him. Steve’s hand catches his and squeeze softly. “It’s me,” Steve whispers. 

“Fuck,” Billy breathes out. 

“Max told me about the mall,” Steve tells him. 

Billy thinks he should be more surprised than he is. But after all, Max said Steve was the one who protected her little group of friends. Why wouldn’t she go running to Steve when Billy finally got the shitty pieces of his memory back? 

“Show me something else,” Billy asks. 

“Like what?”

“Something else real.”

Steve looks at him for a moment, then he nods. He flicks on the flashlight Billy hadn’t realized he was carrying, and points it toward his pool. The surface shimmers in the beam of light. “Barb died there.”

Billy takes a moment to flip through his mental rolodex of Hawkins students. He comes up blank. “Who?” Then he frowns. “Wait, what the fuck? Someone died in your pool?” 

Steve is glaring when he turns to Billy, the moonlight just enough to make out the expression of contempt on his face. “If you’re going to tell me it’s bullshit then you can just get the fuck out of here and never fucking come back.”

“No,” Billy holds up his hands in defense, “not bullshit. I mean, what the actual fuck are you talking about? What do you mean someone named Barb died in your fucking pool?”

Steve shrugs, looks back at his light on the still water. “Barb was this friend of Nancy’s. Her best friend. She got pulled into the Upside Down. She got eaten. By one of the Demogorgons. Right here.”

Billy feels like he might throw up. Somehow this is worse than the scattered mosaic of his memories. It’s real and visceral because it happened to someone else. It happened before Billy even got to this shitty town. 

“Show me something else,” Billy demands. 

Steve holds Billy’s gaze for a moment. And then he holds out his hand. 

Billy takes it without question. 

Steve leads the way into the immense forest behind his house. He walks slowly so that they don’t trip over the fallen logs and ditches in the dirt. They walk until the night time noises of the forest fade into a chilling silence. All the while, Steve holds Billy’s hand, like he’s afraid they might get separated in this dark woods and never find their way out again. 

Steve shines a circle around them with his flashlight. “There’s something wrong with the trees here.”

“Like the farm?” Billy asks. He shivers in the darkness, the moonlight lost behind the leaves above them. 

“Yeah,” Steve agrees, “like the farm.”

Billy steps closer to the nearest tree, but Steve’s hand is like an anchor, holding him back. Billy looks at him for an explanation. 

“Some of them open up to the Upside Down. Or at least they did, when the gate was open. Don’t touch anything.”

Billy steps back toward Steve. In the darkness, in the quiet, Billy can give a voice to what has been in his thoughts since the mall. “Am I the monster now, Steve?”

Steve clicks off his flashlight. They listen to the eerie silence that is not broken even by the sighing of the wind. “You were.”

“But am I now?” Billy persists. 

“Well,” Steve says, “you’re definitely still a prick.”

Billy shocks himself by laughing and spooks a nearby owl into hooting with distress. Billy lets go of Steve’s hand and shoves him hard in the chest. “You’re such a fucking asshole.”

Steve shrugs. “Whatever, man," and Billy hears a smirk in his voice, "you asked.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Wasn’t it? You’ve always been a douchebag, Hargrove. I don’t think alien possession and consequent de-possession changes that.”

Rolling his eyes, Billy sits down on the ground, the dirt and leaves sticking to the skin of his legs. He presses his palms against the soil, it’s dry when it should be moist. “Do you think it was my fault?”

Steve kicks a spot clean before sitting down next to him. Their crossed knees bump against each other. “I think something really awful happened to you. Worse than has happened to the rest of us. I think you were in a lot of pain. I think you almost died. I know you fought against the Mind Flayer though. I saw that. At Starcourt. I saw you fight that thing, I saw it try to eat you alive, and I saw Max’s heart break when she thought it had.”

Billy shivers, this time it has nothing to do with the cold. “But do you think it’s my fault?”

Steve sighs. He hooks his arms around his legs. “How could it be, Billy? I don’t know how much Max has told you, but Will, one of the kids, he got possessed too. Not like you. Something more insidious. The way Will explained it, it was like being a prisoner in your own head. He didn’t have control over anything that was happening. You got possessed by the leveled up version of what got him.”

“But I killed people,” Billy says, letting the words drop off his tongue and hang heavy in the air between them. 

“You didn’t, the Mind Flayer did,” Steve says without hesitation. 

Billy’s shoulders slump with relief. He lets himself rest some of his weight against Steve’s side. “I can’t sleep anymore.”

“I used to sleep like the dead,” Steve says. “But since the hole in the field, I wake at the slightest noise.”

“Does it get better?”

Steve shrugs, his shoulder moving against where Billy is leaning into him. “I couldn’t tell you. It’s only gotten worse so far.”

“But it’s closed now, the gate, right?”

Steve exhales heavily. “I don’t know. El keeps thinking it is, but then somehow it opens again. Or something else sneaks through. I think it’s this town. This shitty fucking town.” 

“I fucking hate Hawkins,” Billy says viciously.

With a huff of a laughter, Steve presses his own weight back against Billy’s side. “Yeah, me too.”

They stay until it gets cold enough that they are both shivering. Then Steve takes Billy’s hand again, turns on his flashlight, and leads them back to his house. Steve doesn’t miss a step and it occurs to Billy that this is a path Steve has taken often enough to have it memorized. He wonders how many times Steve has come out here with his baseball bat checking for dead trees and alien monsters. 

At his house, Steve rubs the back of his head awkwardly. “You going to be okay with all of this?”

Billy shrugs. “I don’t have much of a choice.” He tilts his head down, licks his bottom lip, and looks back at Steve. “Sorry for calling it bullshit.”

Steve’s eyes spark with surprise. He doesn’t say anything though, just drops his hand to his side and nods to Billy. “See you around.”

“Sure,” Billy says, not meaning it. After tonight, Billy very much doubts he’ll be seeing Steve Harrington again. It turns out instead of having nothing in common, they have too much.

~*~*~*~

Back at his house, Billy climbs the ladder to the porch roof, walks deftly across it, and hoists himself back into his bedroom. Then stifles the curse that almost slips out at top volume.

Max is sitting on the edge of his bed, fingers fisted against his sheets. She darts an anxious look at him before jumping off the bed and bum rushing him with a tight hug which quickly morphs into her punching him in the shoulder, hard. 

“The fuck,” Billy hisses, rubbing at where her freakishly sharp knuckles have jabbed into his shoulder bone. 

“I thought you died!” Max hisses back, equally pissed off. “I came in here, you were gone, and like, after today, I just - I -”

Billy rolls his eyes. He grabs his cigarettes off his night stand and lights one up. He kicks his All Stars off and sits down on the floor at the base of his bed. He rests his head back against his mattress, blowing a stream of smoke up at his fan. “The fuck you sneaking into my room in the first place, Maxine?”

“You’re such a dick when you call me that,” she complains, sitting down next to him and resting her head against his shoulder without hesitation. Like she knows he won’t shove her off. And he doesn’t. 

“I call you that because you’re such a pain in my ass,” he corrects her. 

“No,” she challenges, haughty, “you call me that instead of calling me your sister. It’s not like some super secret code, you loser.”

He isn’t sure if she’s right, but he’s got a suspicion she’s not wrong. “Whatever, Maxine. Answer the question.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she confesses. “I thought maybe you couldn’t either. And we could, I don’t know, bitch about Hawkins and complain about how much better California is.”

“Hawkins is the fucking pits,” Billy says before taking another drag from his cigarette, “and that’s not even taking into account the fucking aliens.”

Max scoffs her disgust. “Do you know none of the other girls skateboard? None of them. One of them actually asked me if I’d borrowed my skateboard from you. What the fuck is wrong with this place?"

Billy smiles, tips his head so his cheek is resting against Max’s soft hair. “Trina Whitman asked me if California was an island like Hawaii.”

Max’s growl of outrage makes Billy feel almost proud of her. “What a fucking idiot. I cannot believe you went out with her. You know my mom called her trashy?”

Billy laughs, keeping his voice quiet so as to not wake up their parents. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t exactly going out with her because I thought she was classy.”

“You are so gross, Billy,” Max whines. “Why can’t you have a nice girlfriend and be all gross in love like Steve was?”

“Steve got his balls crushed by Nancy because he’s a dipshit. That’s what you get for being gross in love, Maxine. And I’m not a fucking dipshit, I’ve just got these urges. You know, the kind they teach you about in health class.”

“Billy!” Max shrieks in quiet outrage. She kicks him hard in the knee and Billy groans before he elbows her hard enough to topple Max to the carpet. 

After that, they devolve into pinching and kicking each other until Billy manages to grab a pillow from his bed and suffocate Max into submission. Billy’s shaking with laughter when he lets go of the pillow and Max comes up, cheeks fire engine red, blue eyes murderous.

“You are so fucking dead, Billy,” she threatens grimly. “Just fucking wait. I’ll put blue dye in your shampoo. Honey in your hair spray. Chili powder in your cologne.”

Billy grins sharply, pulling Max up against his side. “You fucking try it an I’ll cut your hair in your sleep."

Max punches him sharp and painfully in the ribs before running from his room. “Asshole!” she whisper shouts before her bedroom door slams shut. Then it creaks open again. “I love you, you piece of shit.”

Billy peers into the hallway down towards her room. “Don’t be stupid, Maxine.”

She flips him off and shuts the door again. 

That spot in his heart, the one Max has been clawing her way into, it’s blood and ravaged and one hundred percent hers. 

Billy falls onto his bed, face smooshed into his pillow. In the morning, he’s surprised when he realizes he fell asleep without having to will himself into the elusive grasp of sleep.

~*~*~*~

Over the next week, nothing changes. Well, nothing that matters changes. Billy continues to work as a pizza delivery boy. He continues to pretend nothing happened at Starcourt. He continues to pretend he didn’t have, like, a fucking moment in the woods with Steve Harrington. He continues to bitch at Max, but like, with more affection, or whatever.

Like right now, when he grabs his own skateboard from the garage and takes it out to where Max is trying and failing to learn to shove-it. “You’re doing it all wrong, Maxine.”

“Shut up, William,” she sing-songs back at him. “No one asked you.” 

“No one asked, and yet my eyes are bleeding watching you tick-tack all fucking day while pretending that’s a shove-it.” Billy gets up from the street curb, turns his head to the side, and eyes Max’s board. 

He tangles his hair into a mess at the base of his neck and twists a hair tie around it until his curls are a messy bun. He stole the hair tie from Max’s room and he will go to his grave denying it. Crossing to Max whose in the middle of their empty street, Billy kicks the board out from beneath her feet. “Your board’s shit.” 

Max stumbles, arms flaring for balance, then turns a venomous look on Billy. “And whose fault is that?”

Billy shrugs. “Mine.” He fishes his keys out of the back pocket of his jeans. “Come on, I’ll get you a new one.”

Max freezes, her entire body stilling so unnaturally Billy has a sudden panic that she’s, like, about to have a seizure or some shit. “Why would you do that?” she asks, her voice guarded. 

It surprises Billy in an off kilter way that for all this sibling bonding and loving him shit, Max doesn’t actually trust him. She cares about him, she worries about him, she loves him, but she doesn’t trust him. 

Billy picks up her board, snaps the deck in half easily where the ducktape is doing a poor job of holding it together. Max gasps before red suffuses her cheeks. She pulls her chin back and Billy can see the berating tirade building up inside her. 

He chucks the decimated board onto their grass. “Don’t be stupid, Maxine.”

Her blue eyes shoot to his and he hopes she gets it, because he doesn’t have a lot to offer. Billy knows he’s an asshole and he doesn’t care, that’s his personality. Take it or fucking leave it. Shawn and Tyler in Cali were each just as much of a douchebag as Billy is, it’s not like he’s alone in the world. And they were his friends. It’s not his fault Hawkins is the fucking worst place on earth where only losers and pathetic jerks live. 

He doesn’t have some secret well of ‘I love yous’ just waiting to burst forth. The last time he said those words had been over the phone, sobbing against the side of his bed, while his mom told him she’d see him in a week. She just needed some time away from his dad. 

Billy stares Max down, waiting for her to make up her mind. Either she actually wants this brother and sister bullshit with Billy, or she needs to cut her losses now, because it’s never going to get any better than this. 

Max growls, ducks her head as she shoves past him, and yanks open the passenger door to the Chevelle. “Let’s fucking go, stupid.”

Billy grins, whistles even, as he swings his key ring around his finger. “Don’t be brat, Max, or I’ll shove you out into one of the fucking cornfields.”

~*~*~*~

On Friday night, Billy’s in the Chevelle, feet kicked up on the dashboard, listening to Foreigner on his cassette deck. In front of him, Dave’s Pizza Shack glows in all of its red and white neon glory. He glances at the car clock and makes a face. He digs his cigarettes out of his front pocket and snags his lighter from the cup holder.

He’s desirably close to the end of his shift, in those last crucial fifteen minutes where if they get a call now, it’s his drive. If they get a call five minutes from now, it’s Aaron’s problem when he shows up at ten, the end of Billy’s time on the clock. Billy’s got his eyes trained on the front door of Dave’s, cigarette clamped between his teeth as he wills the doors to stay shut. 

They don’t.

John, the Hawkins’ High sophomore whose manning the cash register, comes swaggering out with the hot bag held aloft in his left hand. Billy flops his right hand out the window and flips him off. “Five fucking minutes, Alderman, that’s all I needed. Are you fucking kidding me?”

John opens the back door of the Chevelle and gently tosses the hot bag onto the seat. “Guess you’ve just got the worst fucking luck, Hargrove.” 

“Don’t I fucking now it,” Billy growls, spiking his cigarette butt onto the pavement. 

John waves him off like the asshole he is as Billy puts the car into reverse. At the mouth of the little strip mall that holds Hawkins movie rental, mom and pop grocer, and the auto body shop, Billy reaches back, grabbing the receipt off the top of the hot bag and scanning over the address.

He hisses through his teeth. “Fucking worst luck.”

~*~*~*~

Billy doesn’t know why he does it. Well, that’s a lie, he knows exactly why he does it, because he’s an asshole. He rounds the side of Harrington’s house, completely bypassing the front door, and sets the hot bag on the ground next to his All-Stars. He picks up a fistful of gravel and hurls it at Steve’s window where there’s a light on.

Like the time before, the window opens almost immediately. Steve hangs his head out, looking down at Billy. His eyes must catch on the big red hot bag. “Are you fucking serious, Hargrove?”

Billy curls his tongue over his teeth. “What, pretty boy, you don’t like my delivery methods?”

Steve huffs with disgust and slams the window down. 

Billy picks up the hot bag and takes a seat on the nearest pool chair, one that’s further away from the pool than seems practical. Billy takes a moment to eye the pool with distrust. He decides he’ll stick to swimming in Hawkins Community Pool where he at least thinks no one has been killed by an alien entity. 

The side door opens and Steve walks out. He’s dressed in this fucking adorable blue zip-up hoodie and he’s wearing jeans that fit him really well. Billy tilts his head to the side and lets Steve catch him checking him out. 

Billy had been best friends with Tyler and Shawn. He had also fucked Tyler for a solid month before they decided that yep, they were bi-best friends too. It’s not like Billy expects Steve to reciprocate the look. It’s just, he likes fucking with Steve, a lot. 

Steve’s pretty. So fucking pretty. Billy wants to hold him down and wreck him. He wants to watch Steve’s pretty brown hair become an absolute fucking disaster when Billy drags his hands through it. He wants to watch Steve’s pretty pale cheeks flush when Billy bites at his hip. He wants to see Steve’s pretty pink mouth opened in an ‘o’ of surprise when Billy takes him down his throat. 

All of this is a hypothetical ‘when’ as in never. Billy’s not stupid. Steve’s been hung up on Nancy Wheeler for what feels like a lifetime. That’s about as straight as a guy gets, hounding after Little Miss Perfect. But Billy’s an asshole, so he likes to pretend that ‘when’ could ever happen. 

“You’re lucky I didn’t even want the pizza,” Steve snipes as he unceremoniously shoves the hot bag off the pool chair and sits down next to Billy instead. 

“The fuck?” Billy asks, suddenly at a loss. 

Steve hand waves away his confusion. “I called your place. Max said you were on shift ‘till ten. I know how Dave’s works. Drayten from basketball worked there. When do you have to get that back?” Steve toes the hot bag with the tip of his sneaker. 

Billy frowns as he looks between Steve and the hot bag. “Are you, like, kidnapping me or some shit, Harrington?”

Steve rolls his eyes dramatically. “No, you idiot. I’m just an impatient rich bitch who didn’t feel like having to wait around for your shift to end.”

“Did we have some hot fucking date I forgot about or?” Billy gestures vaguely around them. He wants to make Steve as uncomfortable as he is, but it doesn’t seem to be working. 

“We aren’t done with our tour,” Steve says. He stands up, looks down at the hot bag, and after a second, pulls out the pizza box and throws the empty bag at Billy. “I guess we can drop this off on the way. I mean, it’s not really on the way but -” he breaks off with a shrug. 

Billy doesn’t move from the pool chair. It’s been a week. A whole week. Billy has very pointedly avoided thinking about the Upside Down. About what had happened to him and what he had done. He has avoided Steve because, while Max at least has the tact not to fucking mention anything otherwordly to him, he didn’t expect the same from Steve. 

“I’m not going,” Billy says firmly. 

Steve turns back, his features creased. “Back to Dave’s? Okay, I mean, I feel like they would want the bag back, but - uh - I’ve never worked in the pizza delivery business so -”

“I don’t want to see anymore of Hawkins,” Billy interrupts. 

“Okay,” Steve allows. He sets the pizza box on the ground. 

Billy stands up, he takes the hot bag with him. “I don’t want any part of this - “ and his lips are forming the word bullshit. It’s on the tip of his tongue when he sees Steve’s weird full body flinch. 

And Billy just fucking hates this town. He hates it so much. There has never been anyone who messed Billy up so much. Stupid Steve Harrington and his stupid hair and stupid face. Billy has slept his way through half the girls in his senior class. He has slept with his fair share of guys back in Cali. Okay, like three, but that’s not the fucking point. The point is, there is no reason for Billy to be so hung up on Steve. For him to seek Steve out even when Billy knows he’s acting like a fucking loser. 

But Steve is this itch he can’t scratch and Billy is just - he’s just so done. 

He tosses the hot bag away, stalks toward Steve, captures Steve’s face in between his palms and kisses the every loving fuck out of him. 

Steve gasps and jerks back, his mouth popping open in that perfect ‘o’ Billy has dreamt about. “Dude!” Steve says, shoving back against Billy to put a few inches between their chests. “Are you out of your mind?”

Billy just looks at him, swipes his tongue against his bottom lip to catch the taste of Steve still lingering there. Steve’s eyes track the motion. He doesn’t answer. 

“This is Hawkins,” Steve says. “People are, like, possesed by aliens here, or are fucking psychic children, or are sucked into the Upside Down, but they aren’t - they’re not -”

“Gay,” Billy finishes for him. Because of course he should have fucking expected this. It’s perfect, pretty boy, Steve. Who probably only gets a boner for girls in pleated skirts. He sneers down at Steve. “Or bi, because I’m bisexual, equal opportunity fucking and all that,” Billy says with more venom than is needed. 

Steve swallows. His eyes sweep up and over Billy. “Jesus, man. I still actively hated you until you nearly fucking died in the mall. You were the worst. Like the real fucking worst. You cracked a plate over my head!”

Which is true. Billy shrugs, already distancing himself from this moment. “I was in a bad mood and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Steve runs a frazzled hand through his hair. “That’s - that’s not an apology!” 

“No,” Billy agrees, “it’s not.” Billy does sorry about as much as he does love. He picks up the hot bag from the ground, crushing it in his fist. “You still owe me for the pizza, whether or not you're going to eat it.”

Steve keeps gaping at him, saying nothing. 

“Is your mom home?” Billy implores, speaking slow like Steve’s gone stupid. “Can she pay me?”

Steve sort of jerks into motion, yanking his wallet out of his back pocket and handing a trembling twenty in Billy’s direction. 

Billy snatches it and shoves it into his pocket. “I’ll keep the change as a tip.” As he leaves Steve’s backyard, he makes sure to kick the pizza box so it flips over and spills pizza onto the yard. Just because he’s an asshole like that.

~*~*~*~

It’s after eleven when Billy pulls into his driveway. After the fiasco at Steve’s, Billy didn’t want to go back to his place. He didn’t want to be trapped in his room with the stupid ceiling fan and no chance of sleep. So he drives around Hawkins in all its shitty glory. He drops off the money and hot bag to Dave’s first, ignoring Alderman’s friendly cajoling about the crumpled state of the hot bag.

Hawkins isn’t big on street lights, so Billy cruises with his windows down and his music turned up too high with only his headlights to guide him. Not like it’s complicated. Hawkins is a backwater farm town more or less, with endless stretches of straight, flat roads. Billy steers clear of the fucked up factory, but otherwise, he outlines the extent of Hawkins, his own personal hell. 

Billy doesn’t know what the Demogorgons or Demodogs look like. They don’t exist in the murky mosaic of his Mindflayed memories. He remembers the rats, though, and when something small darts across the road, Billy slams his breaks on so hard he fishtails. He ends up stopped diagonally across the road, panting. 

He jams the car back into drive and goes ten over the whole way back to his house. The lights are off inside, not entirely surprising. The Hargrove-Mayfield clan aren’t exactly night owls. Billy locks the Chevelle and keeps his keys out to unlock the front door. 

He doesn’t need to.

It wrenches open at the same time the porch light flicks on above him. Billy feels his stomach drop. His mind quickly races over everything that happened today. But he can’t come up with anything, anything at all that would have set his dad off. 

Before Billy can begin to protest, his dad fists Billy’s shirt in his hand as he drags him into the house, the foyer lights blazing even though the house had been pitch dark a moment ago. “The hell have you been, boy?” his dad demands, shaking the first holding onto Billy’s shirt.

Billy lifts his hands warily. “I got off of work late, Dad.”

“Your shift ends at ten,” his dad barks. 

Billy still doesn’t know what the issue is. His dad has eased up on tracking Billy’s movements as l long as his chores are done and Max is accounted for. “And I got off late," Billy repeats slowly, "then I went for a drive.”

His dad huffs, thrust Billy back a step until Billy’s heels hit the front door. It slides closed with his weight pressed against it. “Guess what Susan told me when I got home?”

Billy doesn’t have a clue. “I don’t know,” he says carefully.

“Max has a new skateboard.” His dad’s tone is a warning. 

Ice runs through Billy’s veins. The stupid skateboard. Fuck. Billy shifts his gaze until he can stare blankly over his dad’s shoulder. Hargrove Sr. isn’t a big man. He’s an inch or two shorter than Billy, in reality, and slight compared to Billy’s toned build. But this close, with his father’s breath rough against his throat, he’s a six foot tall god of destruction. 

“Why would Max need a new skateboard, Billy? After her mother just bought her one when we got to Hawkins?”

Billy’s back teeth clench together. His thoughts are a turbulent black rage. It always comes to this. Some stupid fucking shit and suddenly Billy’s got his back against a wall and his father snarling in his face, his fist already curling to aim a well placed hit that won’t bruise but will ache for days. 

“Answer me!” his dad screams. 

Billy’s teeth grind against each other. “I didn’t - “

“It was me!”

Billy jerks at the unexpected interruption, at a wave of brilliant red hair that comes sailing down the staircase. Max streaks across the foyer, grabbing at Billy’s wrist and trying to drag him away from his dad. 

His dad’s furious gaze darts from Billy to Max and back again. His fingers, still clenched in Billy’s shirt, tighten. “Go back to bed, Max, this doesn’t concern you.”

Max wedges herself in the scant space between Billy and his dad. “Really, it was my fault. I - I left it outside - on the curb. And it -”

“Max, no,” Billy says furiously, shaking off his dad’s grip to get Max behind him, away from his dad. Billy’s heart is thundering against his chest as he tries to think of how to get Max out of here. To get her somewhere that his dad isn’t. Where the fuck is Susan? What the fuck is Max trying to do?

“I asked what happened, boy!” his dad bellows, apparently deciding to carry on as if Max isn't there. 

“It was me!” Max shouts again, lunging around Billy to try and face his dad. Billy grabs her again, dragging her behind him and shoving both of them towards the stairs. 

“Shut up, Max!” Billy yells at her, scared. 

“Don’t you yell at your sister!” Billy’s dad pulls his arm back and Billy turns his face, bracing for the slap. 

It doesn’t come. 

Max yanks the back of Billy’s shirt and topples him to the floor, on top of her, so they are pinned together at the bottom of the stairs. His dad’s hand whips through the space Billy had been at the same time the stairway light turns on. 

“What in the world is going on down here?” Susan demands, wrapped up in her housecoat. 

“Nothing, Susan,” Neil says tightly. “I was just speaking to my son about respecting other people’s property.”

“Max?” Susan asks, quickly treading down the stairs. She crouches on the bottom step, staring worriedly at her daughter, still caught beneath Billy’s bulk. “Maxine, what’s going on?”

“My skateboard,” Max says, her voice wobbly for the first time since this whole shit show began. “The one that got broken. Neil thinks it’s Billy’s fault.”

“What?” Susan reaches for her daughter. Billy can’t take his eyes off his dad, but he edges to the side, letting Max up, but keeping her within reach. Susan pulls Max against her chest, smoothing her red hair back from her damp cheeks. “I thought you said it got clipped by a car when you left it on the curb?”

“It did,” Max insists, looking intensely at Billy. 

Susan blinks rapidly, turning to take in the disheveled state of Billy’s shirt, and Neil’s cold, hard eyes. She reaches out, curving an arm around Billy’s right shoulder, and drawing him over to her until he’s side by side with Max. “Neil, what on earth is going on right now?” 

Susan runs a nervous hand through Billy’s curls, trying to soothe him or something. Like he’s part of her family instead of an intruder in it. Billy feels like he’s going to jump out of his skin.

Max curls up against his side, trying to shield him with her small body. It makes Billy feel like his mind is breaking. He shifts onto his knees, stretches his arm out ot rest his hand on her knees so she’s locked safely away from Neil. 

His dad’s watching the three of them with unguarded hostility. 

“It’s okay, Max,” Billy whispers, desperate to get her to let him go. “I can take it.”

“Billy, no,” Max begs. 

Billy grimaces. “Don’t be stupid, Maxine.”

“Mom,” Max pleads, switching tactics. “Mom, please, I just want to go to bed.”

Susan looks down at her daughter before nodding slowly. “Yes, maybe that’s best.” She stands up, bringing Max and Billy with her. “Max, Billy, go up to bed. Neil and I will talk to you both in the morning.” She’s staring down Neil as she speaks. Then she presses a kiss to Max’s forehead, gently pushing her up the first step. 

Max instantly reaches back, taking Billy’s hand in hers and drags him up the stairs after her. Billy’s heart is still racing on adrenaline and fear because he knows this isn’t over. His dad isn’t going to just let this go. But before Billy can start trying to catalogue the fall out, Max is pulling him into her room and shutting the door, clicking the lock for extra measure. 

“What the fuck, Max?” Billy asks, bewildered. 

Max drops down to the floor, scrabbles beneath her bed for a minute, and drags out a bright purple sleeping bag. “Here,” she says, shoving it at Billy before crawling onto her bed and throwing him her extra pillow. 

“I can’t sleep in here, Max,” Billy says, holding both the sleeping bag and pillow like they are venomous snakes. 

“If you’re here, I know you’re safe.” She crosses her arms over her chest, her cheeks shining with tear tracks. 

“Max,” he sighs, letting the items drop from his hands. He sits down next to his sister, pulls her close against his side. “It’s going to be okay, I promise. I can take whatever my dad has coming, but - “ he continues when she tries to interrupt “ - I bet after talking to your mom, he won’t have much to say to me.”

Billy’s making it up. He has no idea what’s going to happen. This is an unprecedented situation. No one has ever stepped in when Hargrove Sr. disciplines his son. Not since Billy’s mom walked out. 

Max winds her arms around Billy’s back and buries her face against his chest. “I love you, Billy, even if you’re the worst big brother and call me Maxine all the time.”

“I know,” he assures her. He hugs her tight, feeling raw and scared. “You’re pretty okay too, for a little shit.”

Her laugh is watery, and when she pulls away her eyes are glossy. ‘I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

“It won’t,” he promises, lying again. Billy wraps a strand of her bright hair around his finger and tugs gently. “Thanks, Max. For being fucking vicious down there.”

She smiles weakly, shoving his shoulder. “Yeah, well, my new board is sweet. I don’t want you thinking buying me things is a bad idea.”

Billy smirks, mussing her hair with his hand until she punches him in the ribs. He slides his palm down to her face and pushes her head back down to her pillow. “Night, Maxine.”

“Whatever, Billy,” she sniffs haughtily. 

Billy flicks her light off as he leaves. He stops at the top of the stairs, straining to hear the conversation between Neil and Susan. He can’t catch anything though, just the low murmur of voices. He crosses to his room, not bothering to lock the door, knowing his dad would smash it down if he wanted to. 

He kicks off his jeans and t-shirt, the ones that reek of the pizza. It feels like he was on shift a million years ago, not one short hour. He crawls into his bed, stares at the ceiling fan, and doesn’t even notice when he drops off into sleep.

~*~*~*~

Billy wakes up to his bedroom light flashing on and off. He grimaces, squinty angrily at his doorway where Max is bobbing up and down on her toes. “Knock if off,” he grumbles before smashing his face back into his pillow.

“Nope,” Max declines, cheerfully. “Come on. You have to drive me to Mike’s.”

“I don’t, actually,” Billy counters. He lifts his head off the pillow and brings it down on top of his face instead. 

Max flicks the lights on again and a second later he feels his sheet slither off the bed. Billy kicks out at her, connects with a bony knee that hurts him more than it does her, and rolls over with an irritated growl. “The fuck, Max?”

“I put coffee in a thermos for you,” she says. 

“So?” He sits up, runs a hand through his disheveled curls. “I don’t even drink coffee.”

Max’s shoulders slump. “I know. But it was the only breakfast appropriate bribe I could think of.”

He rolls his eyes at her. “Why can’t your mom drive you?”

“Because she and your dad went to have some discussion.” Max air quotes the last word. 

That wakes up Billy better than any coffee could have. “About what?”

Max looks at him like he’s stupid. “About last night. I mean, it has to be, right?”

“Shit.” Billy drags a hand down his face, feels his stubble rough against his palm. 

“Take me to Mike’s, please?”

Billy sighs. “Why does it have to be Mike’s?” He doesn’t feel like seeing Mrs. Wheeler anytime soon. After everything that happened, trying to fuck a hot mom seems a lot less stellar than it did at the beginning of summer. 

“We always go to Mike’s. His parents are the only ones who don’t care about having like ten kids at their house.” 

“Can’t you skate there?” Billy stands up and goes to his dresser, rifling through his clothes until he finds a blue t-shirt that he knows for a fact matches his eyes. 

“Don’t be a jerk, please?” Max huffs and sits down on his bed. 

“I’m not,” he complains. “I just don’t want to drive to the Wheeler’s. I’ll take you to the Arcade. Or the pool. Or what the fuck ever.”

Max perks up at this. “Really?”

Billy flips her off for her distrust, then crosses his heart. 

“Okay,” Max decides quickly. “I’ll go radio the Party.”

Billy side-eyes her because her friends are fucking nerds. Maniac nerds who are willing to get killed trying to save the world. Adults are always worrying about TV rotting kids’ brains. Clearly, they hadn’t been worried enough about the effects of fucking D’nD. 

While Max is gone, Billy pitches his basketball shorts and boxers into his hamper. Then he grabs out a new pair of boxers and a pair of Levis. He peers into his mirror, makes a face at the mess his hair is, and shakes his fingers through it until his curls are loose and artfully messy instead. 

“Billy!” Max shouts from downstairs. 

“What?” He bawls back. 

“Take me to the Byers?”

Fabulous. The Byers where Billy tried to kill Steve with a plate and got tranqed by his sister instead. Is there any place in this shitty town that isn’t haunted by fucked up memories? “Fine,” he calls down. 

When they pull up to the Byers, there are no other cars in the gravel driveway, but there are several bicycles slumped on the yellowing grass. “Who's watching you dipshits?” Billy questions suspiciously. 

Max rolls her eyes at him. “Nothing weird is going on now. So we’re going to do normal, boring stuff like watch movies, eat popcorn, and shit.”

Billy looks up at the house, specifically the big front picture window. A doe eyed girl stares out at them. Billy feels the world slide away from him for a moment. _She was pretty. Really pretty._

“Billy?” Max asks, and it’s clear it’s not the first time she’s said his name. 

He comes back to himself with his fingers digging into the material of the Chevelle’s steering wheel. He lets out a stuttering breath and licks his dry lips. “That’s her, isn’t it?”

“El,” Max agrees gently. 

“I want to - I need to -” but Billy can’t articulate it as he shoves his shaking limbs out of the door and sort of scrambles for the front door. 

It wrenches open at his approach and the girl, El, is just standing there, looking up at him, vulnerable and so very small. He kind of stares at her, feels his breathing ratch it up, and then he’s kneeling in front of her. 

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he begs, eyes locked on her huge brown gaze. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, he doesn’t feel in control of himself. Billy’s flying apart and he’s terrified of what happens next. 

Except what happens next keeps him from disappearing. El wraps her arms around Billy, tucking her face close in against his next. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “It’s okay, Billy.”

And then there’s another weight resting against his back, Max’s strawberry smelling hair falling around him as she hugs him from behind.

Minutes eclipse seconds before the world returns to its normal rotation for Billy. Then he takes a deep breath and buries everything that happened this summer in a pit so deep that it won’t be ale to hurt him again. 

He shifts back from El, turning up her chin with a nudge from his thumb. “Thanks for saving me.” 

She smiles at him and Billy notices her funny little incisor teeth. It kind of bruises his heart that this kid, this little kid, has carried the literal weight of the world on her shoulders. 

Max swings around from her hold on Billy’s shoulders and shoves her face in front of his. “Hey! Why are you nicer to El than you are to me?” She pretends to pout.

Billy squashes Max’s cheeks together and smirks. “Because she’s a fucking super hero and you’re just a red head.”

“Asshole!” Max chirps out between her fish lips. 

Billy laughs, shoving her away. “I’m picking you up at six. Don’t do anything stupid.”

Max sighs dramatically, grabbing El’s hand in hers. “He’s such a pain,” she confides. El smiles shyly at Billy, giggling. 

Billy stands up, brushes off the knees of his jeans. “Keep talking, Maxine, and you’re walking home.”

“See,” Max complains, “he’s the worst.” She ignores Billy, walking back into the Byers house with El who waves goodbye to Billy. 

“Six o’clock!” Billy shouts through the door before leaving.

~*~*~*~

When Billy gets back to his house, there’s an unwanted visitor sitting on his doorstep. Billy contemplates driving straight passed and heading for Tommy’s instead. Even if Tommy is an idiot, he’s an idiot who knows nothing about the Upside Down and who always has good weed. Except Billy doesn’t want to be perceived as running away.

So he pulls into the driveway and glares through his sunglasses at Steve Harrington. Stepping out of the Chevelle, Billy lights a cigarette and takes a drag. “The fuck you doing here, amigo?”

Steve makes a barely noticeable frown at the name. “I wanted to talk. About last night.”

Billy tilts his head back and exhales smoke towards the cotton candy smear of clouds. “Funny. I got nothing to say to you.” 

“Billy, come on,” Steve sighs. 

Billy does not fucking feel like coming on. “Get off my porch, Harrington.”

“This is stupid. Isn’t, like, a traumatic experience supposed to bring people closer together?” Steve sounds a shade desperate. Billy doesn’t give a fuck. 

“If you’re calling what happened last night a traumatic experience then I can give you another right now.” Billy spikes his half smoked cigarette to the driveway. “I’ve been just dying for a good fight. Although, judging by past experience, I doubt you’ll make it past the first few minutes.” Billy curls his tongue against his teeth and lets his fury revve against his nerves. 

Fuck Steve for showing up like this. Like they have shit all to talk about. Steve made things very obvious last night. Billy is so fucking sick of this town. He has got to get the hell out of Hawkins and the sooner the better. 

“No - fuck.” Steve holds up his hands defensively. “I didn’t mean - I wasn’t talking about _that_. I meant the whole - you know, Upside Down. That trauma.”

“Then we still have nothing to discuss. Now get off my porch before I have to call Hawkins’ finest and report you for trespassing.”

“Billy - “

“Stop saying that,” Billy grinds out. 

“What?” Steve asks, clearly bewildered.

“My fucking name. We aren’t friends. We aren’t anything. So fuck off. In case I wasn’t clear last night, I want to know fuck all about the other side of Hawkins. As far as I’m concerned, all that died the same night that I almost did.” He glares Steve down, daring him to push him on this. 

Steve’s shoulders slump, but he stands his ground. “I get being scared of this stuff but -”

“I’m not scared,” Billy cuts him off. “I’m done with it. There’s a big fucking difference.”

Steve nods eagerly, like he wants nothing more than to placate Billy. “Yeah, no, I totally get that.”

“Great. Then leave, Harrington.” Billy makes a sweeping gesture with his arm to indicate all the space Steve has to leave.

He doesn’t move. “So last night you, uh, kind of took me by surprise, and I just thought -”

“I heard what you thought loud and clear.” Billy decides that he’s had enough. If Steve wants to fucking squat on his porch like some kind of freak, then what the fuck ever. He stalks to the porch, shouldering past Steve as hard as he can. 

Steve falls back a step at the contact. But he rallies quickly, dogging after each of Billy’s steps. “No, you didn’t,” he protests.

Billy twists his keys in the door and tries to figure out how to get inside without letting Steve in as well. He’s sort of trapped in between the screen door and the shut house door, with Steve’s lanky body propping the screen door wide. Billy inches the front door open. Maybe if he pushes Steve, he’ll be out of the way of the screen door which will give Billy the scant few seconds he needs to make it into the house and lock the door behind him. 

He turns halfway and lifts his hands to shove Steve. Which is when Steve grabs Billy by the collar of his shirt and pulls him in sharp. Their teeth smack together painfully. Steve hisses out a breath and Billy tries to wrestle himself out of Steve’s reach. 

Steve jerks him forward again and this time their lips meet softly. Billy freezes, furious and confused at the same time. Steve presses his advantage, nibbling gently at Billy’s bottom lip before drawing away. “I fucked up,” he says quietly, bambi eyes looking at Billy earnestly. 

Billy looks over Steve’s shoulder to the line of fancy houses on his new street. He fumbles for the door handle and pulls Steve with him into his empty house. “Fucked up how?” he asks when the door is closed.

Steve licks his bottom lip, keeps his eyes trained on Billy. “You’re like the worst and you drive me crazy all the time, even when you’re not around. And I was so good with hating you forever, or at least until I got the fuck out of Hawkins. But then you showed up at my house. And you were worried about what my mom thought of you. My mom. Who is barely five foot five..” He tilts his head and cracks a half smile. “She thinks you're some kind of maniac drug dealer, by the way.”

Billy shrugs this off. “I’m not exactly hung up on her opinion of me right now.”

Steve nods. “Yeah. Right.” Steve lifts his hand and trails it across the collar of Billy’s shirt. “Will you show me your scars?”

It’s a crazy question, because, clearly, Steve has gone crazy. And yet, Billy drags his perfect blue shirt over his head and drops it to the floor. 

Steve’s eyes scan quickly over him. Then he reaches out a tentative finger. He looks to Billy for permission that Billy can’t help but give. Steve traces his finger delicately over the angry ridges of the scar in the center of Billy’s chest. 

“I know you don’t want anything to do with Hawkins weird bullshit, but, you - uh - don’t seem opposed to me and my weird bullshit.” Steve lets his hand fall to his side.

Billy pulls his shirt back on. He tilts his head and takes in Steve standing nervously in front of him. “I never said you were bullshit, Harrington.”

Steve bites at his plush bottom lip. “Yeah, well, I’ve heard from a reliable source -”

“Nancy Wheeler is hardly a reliable source,” Billy scoffs. “She wears shoulder pads. If anything, she’s bullshit.”

Steve’s pretty brown eyes light up. He presses his lips together, the corners of his mouth turning up. “You don’t want to tour the weird parts of Hawkins anymore. So I was thinking I could show you the boring shit instead. Like the quarry. And the bowling alley. And make out point.” His pale cheeks blush a pretty pink.

Billy reels Steve to him with his fingers snared in the hem of Steve’s shirt. “Oh yeah? You know all the best spots, Steve?”

Steve nods, smiling a little. He slips his hands up the back of Billy’s blue shirt and rubs his thumbs against Billy’s hips. “All of them,” he assures. 

“Hmm,” Billy ponders. “Where would we start?”

“Crazy coincidence, but I’ve heard there’s a room here in this empty house, a bedroom actually, with a decent bed.” Steve settles his hands on Billy’s hips as he leans up to kiss a line up Billy’s neck. 

“Wild,” Billy says, absolutely fucking thrilled by this turn of events. “Only, I heard that in Hawkins people get possessed by aliens and evil Russians take over but they don’t -”

Steve interrupts with a quick kiss. “Turns out that’s bullshit. ” He leans back to look Billy in the eyes. “Complete and absolute bullshit.” 

Billy holds his gaze. “You sure, Steve?”

“Positive.” Steve leans forward, presses his lips against Billy’s. He runs his tongue across Billy’s bottom lip enticingly. 

Billy cups Steve’s face and kisses back. He bites at Steve’s bottom lip, urging Steve to kiss him harder, to wrestle for dominance like they do in all their interactions. Steve laughs, tilts away to lift a brow at Billy. 

“This is going to change everything, isn’t it?”

“Welcome to the new Hawkins,” Billy promises. 

Steve twines his arms around Billy’s neck, tangles his fingers in Billy’s curls. “Sounds perfect.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](http://wistful-wisterias.tumblr.com)


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